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Community organizers who have fought for a decade to end oil extraction in urban neighborhoods were gratified by the large penalty, and said they hope it will be collected.

“I’m glad that CalGEM is being more aggressive in using its enforcement authority to go after deadbeat, problematic oil companies like the Nasco site that put community members’ health and safety at risk,” said STAND-LA coalition coordinator Eric Romann. But, he added, “I would say that there’s evidence to suggest CalGEM’s bark is worse than its bite. If it’s issuing fines in problem areas that are clearly in violation and not even collecting them, it’s deeply concerning.”

The Desert Sun and ProPublica investigation found that although CalGEM has received funds for dozens of new staff and a shift in mission to focus on safety and the environment, many companies continue to violate California’s oil and gas rules with impunity.

In 2020, CalGEM said, it issued $191,669 in civil penalties and collected zero. Between 2018 and 2020, CalGEM issued 66 enforcement orders. Of those, just 11 had been complied with, while the vast majority remained outstanding, according to agency records and responses. State Sen. Henry Stern, D-Los Angeles County, has proposed legislation that would require CalGEM to make inspection reports and other enforcement documents available to the public on its website.

At the Nasco site in downtown Los Angeles, Friday’s order by oil and gas supervisor Uduak-Joe Ntuk caps years of efforts by the agency to force the company to fix or shut down what an internal investigation called “bad” wells. In 2016, inspectors flagged problems. In 2019, an investigative unit at CalGEM said Nasco was injecting huge amounts of water into well bores there above the legal pressure limits, aiming to push more crude out of what is known as the Los Angeles Downtown Oil Field.

Similarly intense injection pressure led to a major oil spill in 2006, after a nearby well bore operated by Nasco’s predecessor ruptured. Hot crude and oily waste bubbled up from underground, filled an apartment building basement, oozed out of manhole covers and buckled sidewalks. More than 130 low-income tenants were evacuated.

The pressure wasn’t the investigators’ only concern. They also noted in an urgent report to a manager that a number of bad wells had been left unfixed for years, and posed “immediate” risks to drinking water aquifers. In July 2020, the agency notified Nasco that the company no longer had legal approvals to inject into the wells, which run thousands of feet under downtown Los Angeles.

Wednesday’s order says Ntuk and his staff “determined that Nasco injected above maximum allowable surface injection pressure into the Wells in violation of Regulations”; that “Nasco failed to cease injecting despite losing approval to inject ... on July 15, 2020”; and that “Nasco did not submit a pipeline management plan as required.”

Each day that Nasco continued to inject without approval is a separate violation. Ntuk ordered the company to pay a civil penalty of $1,449,000.

Romann, the community organizer, said the ongoing concerns about the Nasco site are one more sign that both city and state regulators should ban oil operations near homes, schools and other sensitive areas.

About 250,000 Angelenos live within half a mile of an active oil or gas extraction site. Statewide, 2.1 million people live within a mile of active oil wells, which use dangerous chemicals and can emit toxic pollutants.

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