On June 23, the Los Angeles City Council took a major step as they approved an ordinance that will prevent new oil and gas extraction and phase out current oil drilling throughout the city. Advocacy done by frontline members of the community for over 10 years has contributed to the ordinance’s first approval.
Wendy Miranda, director of policy for Esperanza Community Housing, said, “This ordinance is about improving public health and air quality—it’s not only about our environment or our climate. Communities have lived too long with toxic drilling in their neighborhoods and the chronic exposure to pollution in their lungs.”
She continued, “Clean air is essential and a health and human right, and our communities deserve to breathe easier. If you remember the COVID-19 pandemic, the thick wildfire smoke last January, or even the current warehouse fire in Boyle Heights, then you know how important that is.”
STAND-L.A. (Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling-Los Angeles) is a coalition of environmental justice groups that consists of Los Angeles community members of Wilmington and South Los Angeles, standing on the frontlines and utilizing their voices to advocate for their neighborhoods to be protected from further toxic oil extraction.
Tianna Shaw-Wakerman, the Environmental Justice Program Director at Black Women for Wellness and a member of Stand-LA, said, “I think sometimes in this work, I want it to be very clear that frontline residents and environmental justice communities hold the answers for building the world that we want to see, and this ordinance is very much proof of that.”
She continued, “It was community organizing that led us to this place and that led us to this phase-out, and it is just proof that, moving forward, we have to listen to community voices in the future.”
While corporations see oil drilling as highly profitable, it degrades the environment in multiple ways, such as causing water and soil contamination, air pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change.
Tuesday’s hearing was a first of its kind, as it was the first vote that consisted of all council members toward re-adopting the oil-drilling phase-out that was initially passed in December 2022. Oil firms sued the city after the original ordinance was passed, and in September 2024, it was overturned. Since then, California has passed AB 3233, a bill that upholds the authority of counties and cities to impose restrictions on oil and gas production within their borders.
After Culver City and Santa Barbara, Los Angeles would be the largest city in the U.S. to phase out oil drilling if the phaseout ordinance were approved by a second council vote later this summer.
The Department of City Planning created the phaseout ordinance, which defines current extraction operations as a nonconforming land use in every city zone.
“Passing this ordinance to phase out oil drilling is just the first step to protect residents. There are egregious violations happening at drill sites in South LA and Wilmington that need immediate attention from the city to protect residents and hold oil operators accountable,” said Richard Parks, president of Redeemer Community Partnership in South LA.
He continued, “Also, the 1,500+ idle wells LAFD has allowed to go unplugged threaten to blow a hole in the city’s budget as oil companies drill and dash into bankruptcy, leaving taxpayers with the bill for cleanup.”
Even with this major step forward, STAND-LA wants immediate assistance for frontline residents impacted by oil drilling in their neighborhoods. They ask that the city revoke permits from oil sites such as the Warren E&P Banning Drill Site and the E&B Murphy Drill Site. Advocates are also calling on the city to hold oil operators accountable by updating its fire code, in which oil operators plunge the city’s over 1,500 idle wells that create severe health and environmental risks.
The sites that this phase-out ordinance will affect include Murphy, Allenco (already shut down due to community efforts), Jefferson (already shut down due to community efforts), Wilmington, S. Broadway, Packard, and Cardiff according to a spokesperson from Stand-LA. Inglewood Oil Field is the largest urban oil field in the nation and spreads across land that falls under Los Angeles City, Culver City, and unincorporated LA (LA County). LA County is also in the process of re-adopting a new ordinance and the organization hopes it will be heard by the Board of Supervisors and adopted before the end of year. For more information please visit www.stand.la/frontlinecommuntities.
