“More than half a million Angelenos live within a quarter mile of an oil well, and we’re already paying the price.” That was Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky’s argument on Tuesday, as the Los Angeles City Council voted 14-0 to start a new effort to end urban oil drilling.
The vote itself is a procedural step. Council members told the city attorney to write an ordinance that bans new oil and gas extraction and treats existing drilling operations as nonconforming uses. Councilwoman Traci Park was absent.
Nothing shuts down yet. The wells keep pumping while the ordinance is drafted, and city officials count more than 2,000 active ones, many close to homes, schools, parks and places of worship. The council also approved environmental findings tied to the proposal. According to city planning documents, the nonconforming designation would apply in every zone. The ordinance is expected back before the council for a final vote later this summer.
Health case, and a quarrel over prices
Yaroslavsky, the driving force behind the measure, described the issue as one of both law and public health. After the vote she told The California Post that the cost “shows up in more kids with asthma, more seniors hooked up to oxygen tanks, and more pregnant women facing preterm labor because they happen to live near an oil rig.”
She also turned on the industry. “Oil companies would rather scare people about gas prices than answer for why their operations are making communities sick,” she said.
Industry groups have in fact warned that limits on local production could push California to import more crude oil, and the vote arrives while worry over gas prices lingers.
A second try
This is not the city’s first attempt. Los Angeles adopted an ordinance in 2022 meant to end oil extraction citywide. Warren Resources, E&B Natural Resources Management Corp. and Hillcrest Beverly Oil Corp. took it to court, arguing that the city had not properly reviewed the effects of the ban. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge sided with the companies, and the ordinance never took effect.
State law has changed since. In 2024 Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 3233, written by Assemblymember Dawn Addis, which gives cities and counties wider power to regulate, limit or prohibit oil and gas activity within their borders.
“It’s now unequivocal that cities have the authority to regulate, limit and prohibit oil and gas operations within our jurisdictions,” Yaroslavsky told her colleagues before the vote. She said the law gave Los Angeles a way back to a drilling ban, and that the absence of an enforceable ordinance “has had real consequences for our communities.”
She acknowledged that another legal challenge could follow. “The work, of course, does not end here,” she said. “There are other tools available to help reach our shared goal of eliminating urban oil drilling from our communities, and I’m committed to using them.”
