"Thick oil was once so abundant beneath Southern California that it bubbled to the surface, most famously at the La Brea Tar Pits.
But after more than a century of aggressive drilling by fossil fuel companies, most of Los Angeles’ profitable oil is gone. What remains is a costly legacy: nearly 1,000 wells across the city, in rich and poor neighborhoods, deserted by their owners and left to the state to clean, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis of state records by the Los Angeles Times and the Center for Public Integrity.
Few U.S. cities are punctured with such a concentration of old drilling sites, with tens of thousands of residents living nearby, from Ladera Heights to Echo Park. If not plugged and cleaned up, many of these orphaned wells will continue to expose people to toxic gases, complicate redevelopment and pose rare but serious threats of explosions. If the state were to tackle the cleanup, it would cost tens of millions of dollars.Thick oil was once so abundant beneath Southern California that it bubbled to the surface, most famously at the La Brea Tar Pits."
This story was a partnership between the Los Angeles Times and the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit news organization in Washington. It was reported and written by Mark Olalde of Public Integrity and Ryan Menezes of The Times. The Times’ Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report.
Mark Olalde and Ryan Menezes report for the Los Angeles Times March 6, 2020.
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