Environmental groups are suing the Kern County Board of Supervisors over its approval of a carbon-capture project at the century-old Elk Hills oil field, alleging that the project violates the California Environmental Quality Act and will likely leak carbon.
Groups including the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity filed the lawsuit in Kern County Superior Court on Nov. 20. The legal complaint calls for an injunction to block what’s called TerraVault I, which was proposed by California Resources Corp. (CRC) to capture, compress and store millions of tons of carbon dioxide gas (CO2).
The completed project would initially capture CO2 from natural gas pumped from the oil field prior to fuel combustion, according to the lawsuit. But the plaintiffs also argue that the storage capacity of the oil field would encourage the building of new carbon sources, including gasoline plants and cement and steel-producing facilities.
“By extending the life of the Elk Hills oil field years longer than necessary and incentivizing a massive build-out of new industrial facilities in the county, TerraVault I flies in the face of the core purpose and objective of CCS (carbon capture and storage) projects – to meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industrial activity like fossil fuel development in order to reverse the climate crisis,” the lawsuit states.
The project poses significant issues involving air quality, local geology, pipeline safety and local water supplies, the complaint says.
“TerraVault I cannot satisfy the most important expectation for all CCS projects – permanent underground storage of CO2 in perpetuity,” the lawsuit states. “(The) project’s location in one of the oldest and largest oil fields in the U.S., where over 7,500 existing wellbores puncture the surface, significantly increases the risk of CO2 leaks into the air or precious local groundwater resources.”
CRC, however, stands by the existing environmental studies that preceded the county’s approval of the project.
“We are confident in the environmental review process conducted by Kern County and look forward to implementation of this project,” Richard Venn, a company spokesman, told the Southern California Record in an email.
The project is the first of its kind for California, according to the company. The oil field has a capacity to store up to 46 million metric tons of CO2, CRC reports, and once in operation, the facility will be able to inject more than 1 million metric tons of CO2 into the ground – which equates to the yearly amount of CO2 emissions from 200,000 passenger vehicles.
“This is a significant step forward for Kern County and CRC in supporting energy transition in California,” the CRC president and CEO, Francisco Leon, said when the carbon-capture project was approved in October. “We believe that carbon-capture technology will lead to the creation of new energy jobs and improve air quality in Kern County.”
But the group Earthjustice, whose attorneys are helping to represent the plaintiffs, said air-quality impacts from the project will disproportionately burden low-income residents and "people of color" who live close to the Elk Hills site.
“Kern County has rubber-stamped the biggest corporate deception since filtered cigarettes,” Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said in a prepared statement. “By claiming to help the climate, California’s largest oil and gas company can benefit from state and federal incentives and subsidies. Projects that disguise fossil fuels as a climate solution warrant close scrutiny and ultimately should not be approved.”