Oil company Citadel Exploration, Inc. has reportedly filed a lawsuit against San Benito County, arguing that the County’s voter-sponsored ban on various types of well stimulation—often referred to generally as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”—is preempted by state law.
Measure J, which was approved by San Benito County voters in November of last year, purports to create a county-wide ban on hydraulic fracturing and other types of secondary and tertiary oil recovery methods. Citadel had reportedly planned to develop up to 1,000 wells in San Benito County that would have employed cyclic steaming, one of the practices subject to the ban.
This fight has been a long time coming. As grass-roots efforts to ban fracking have increased over the last few years, industry representatives have consistently maintained that (1) regulation of “down-hole” activities is explicitly under the jurisdiction of the Department of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), and therefore cannot be regulated at the local level; and (2) local bans on fracking are preempted by the comprehensive state regulatory scheme prescribed by SB 4, passed in 2013. To that end, Citadel’s complaint against the County reportedly contends that “regulation of down-hole operations is exclusively a State function and that the defendant lacks the power and authority to regulate down-hole operations.”
In November, Citadel filed a $1.2 billion administrative claim against the County, a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit, covered here. Previous coverage of SB 4 is available here and here.
--Kathryn Oehlschlager
UPDATE - April 7, 2015: Citadel Exploration has abandoned its legal challenge to San Benito County’s Measure J, a voter-sponsored initiative that banned several enhanced recovery methods of extracting oil and gas, including hydraulic fracturing and cyclic steaming. Citadel’s plan to develop oil wells in a remote area of San Benito County are currently undergoing environmental review, and it filed a lawsuit last month seeking $1.2 billion in damages. Its motives for abandoning the claim are not clear.
For more information, contact Kathryn Oehlschlager at klo@bcltlaw.com or (415) 228-5458.
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