[CPEO-BIF] "Big Oil Companies Are Selling Their [California] Wells. Some Worry Taxpayers Will Pay to Clean Them Up."

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Big Oil Companies Are Selling Their Wells. Some Worry Taxpayers Will Pay to Clean Them Up.
Shell and ExxonMobil are selling their California wells despite oil selling at high prices. Experts say one reason is looming liability for environmental cleanu


by Mark Olalde
ProPublica
October 27, 2022

The price of oil produced in California this year reached its highest level in a decade. President Joe Biden is releasing millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to keep prices in check. And fossil fuel companies’ earnings are so high that Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for a windfall tax on their profits.

It might seem like a lucrative time to drill for oil in the Golden State. Yet, some of the world’s largest oil companies, several of which have done business in the state for more than a century, are selling assets and beginning to pull out of California.

Even with strong cash flow in the short term, producers have more to gain from offloading wells and the associated liability — chiefly expensive environmental cleanup — than from pumping more oil and gas, experts say.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.propublica.org/article/california-oil-wells-shell-exxonmobil

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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