FRESNO, Calif. — Time is running out for people to offer their two cents about the Trump administration's plan to allow more fracking on 1 million acres of federal land in central and southern California. The public comment period on the Bureau of Land Management's Environmental Assessment ends one week from today on June 10.

Howard Penn, executive director with the Planning and Conservation League, said hydraulic fracturing carries unacceptable risks of toxic chemicals seeping into the groundwater and pollutants worsening air quality.

"What this really comes down to is drinkable water and clean air,” Penn said. “These are the real major impacts for especially disadvantaged communities. They don't have the systems in place to be able to extract the chemicals out of the water table - especially people that are on wells."

The land in question ranges from the coast to the Central Valley across Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura counties. That is in addition to a separate but similar plan for more than 700,000 acres from Monterey to the Bay Area.

The Western States Petroleum Association, which supports the plan, said fracking is safe for the environment and needs to be a part of the energy mix. The BLM says the new oil and gas wells would create jobs in rural communities.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt spent his prior career in the oil and gas industry. Penn said he thinks the administration will act fast to finalize the proposal and start selling leases before the 2020 election to thwart any future attempts to reverse them.

"He was a lobbyist for this industry so he knows how to play the game and get these things lined up in a short period of time so they become more difficult in the future,” Penn said. “Once they start those leases, to go back through the ruling process and the evaluation process and then revoke leases is a much more challenging effort."

Public comment can be made on the BLM Bakersfield Field Office website. Penn said once the proposal becomes final - he fully expects environmental groups and the California Attorney General's office to fight it in court.

A bill designed to fight price-gouging at the gas pump is expected to pass the California State Assembly today and be signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom soon after.

Senate Bill X1-2 would create a watchdog at the California Energy Commission empowered to set a "reasonable" profit margin for gasoline and assess penalties for price-gouging.

Meghan Sahli-Wells, former mayor of Culver City and California director of the group Elected Officials to Protect America, said oil companies must be held accountable.

"What we've seen is behind these price hikes aren't the external forces that the big oil companies have blamed for the humongous price spikes," Sahli-Wells asserted. "What we've seen are refineries that have doubled their profits."

The Western States Petroleum Association has slammed the bill, blaming high gas prices on a supply shortage linked to a lack of investment in refining capacity and necessary infrastructure.

Gas prices last summer and fall hit an average of $6.42 per gallon in California, more than $2.50 higher than the national average.

The oil and gas industry is behind a ballot measure to roll back a California law passed last year requiring new drilling permits to include setbacks from homes and schools. Sahli-Wells argued the state needs to cut air pollution from burning fossil fuels, adding she does not like recent mailers blaming higher gas prices on state regulation.

"The industry itself is going hot and heavy on propaganda to scare people into dialing back environmental protection," Sahli-Wells contended. "It does feel somewhat like an 'oil war' is happening in California. But we know that if we are to win, that oil must lose."

The new watchdog would also have the power to subpoena business records in order to root out price manipulation.

California lawmakers hold a hearing in Sacramento today on a bill to hold oil companies and gasoline refiners accountable for alleged price gouging.

According to the Office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, gas prices in California hit an average of $6.42 per gallon last fall, which was $2.61 more than the national average. And it happened even as crude oil prices dropped and state taxes and fees remained unchanged.

Farrah Khan, mayor of Irvine, said she supports Senate Bill 2, which would establish an independent watchdog within the California Energy Commission.

"It's going to establish a new division to provide independent oversight and analysis of the market," Khan explained. "This new division would have the power to subpoena information deemed necessary to root out and address any of the abuses of market power."

The Western States Petroleum Association said in a statement, "This new windfall penalty in this proposal is actually worse than the original bill. The Legislature would be giving away all its authority to a group of unelected bureaucrats who will have the power to set gasoline prices and impact fuels markets. [This] will likely lead to the same unintended consequences as his initial proposal - less investment, less supply, and higher gasoline prices for Californians."

Steven Hernandez, mayor of Coachella, said it is a matter of fairness to the families who live paycheck to paycheck.

"People struggle to afford gas and rent, and to pay medical expenses," Hernandez pointed out. "When we're mindful of the working class, I think we're better off as a society."

The California Energy Commission watchdog would analyze data to look for patterns of misconduct or price manipulation. The bill would also start a rule-making process at the Commission, to set a reasonable profit margin and impose a penalty for price-gouging above the margin. Any fines would be returned to taxpayers.


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A new report found forced power outages in this winter's extreme weather only added to "unreliability" in the fossil-fuel sector.

The PJM Interconnection is the electricity market including Pennsylvania and a dozen other states. Coal and gas plant owners' failure to honor their reliability commitments may cost them as much as $2 billion in penalties.

Dennis Wamsted, energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and the report's author, said some states saw rolling blackouts, and PJM used emergency measures to keep the lights on in Pennsylvania. Wamsted argued it all makes the case for renewable energy as an alternative.

"We are an organization that favors the transition to renewables," Wamsted explained. "We think renewable energies like solar, wind, battery storage, are here today. They are reliable today, they are cheaper than fossil fuels, and they also don't pollute the air, and solve, you know, a lot of our climate change problems."

The report noted in the PJM system, with more than 32,000 megawatts of gas and 7,600 megawatts of coal capacity, were offline at the height of the cold, despite substantial capacity payments PJM pays generators to be available at critical times.

Wamsted pointed out hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were left without power because of the severe storm, and customers in the Carolinas and the seven states in the Tennessee Valley Authority service territory saw outages. He noted there were no rolling blackouts in the Keystone State, but notifications were sent to customers to prepare for the possibility of an outage.

"And so they didn't get to the point where they actually had to turn people's lights off," Wamsted recounted. "They were getting close to that in the sort of a warning structure, and they were appealing to customers to, you know, cooperate and help reduce demand. And that actually does work. "

The report showed the problems associated with the outages prompted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation to launch a joint inquiry into the events surrounding the December freeze and the performance of the nation's bulk power system.