Community, Advocates Voice Serious Concerns With PXP Study, Release Detailed Analysis In Response
Los Angeles—At the Plains Exploration & Production Company’s (PXP) annual community meeting last night, people from the communities surrounding the Inglewood Oil Field joined advocacy organizations Citizens Coalition for a Safe Community and Food & Water Watch in speaking out against PXP’s recent study on fracking and the practice of fracking and its related activities in general. During a brief press conference before PXP’s meeting, Food & Water Watch released a detailed analysis of PXP’s fracking study that delineates how the study does nothing to address the community’s concerns and bends science to suit the oil and gas industry’s financial interests.
“The conflict of interest and lack of independent scientific scrutiny involved in this ‘study’ could not be more obvious and does nothing to address the long-term risks that drilling and fracking pose to communities surrounding the Inglewood Oil Field,” said Food & Water Watch Pacific Region Director Kristin Lynch. “On the contrary, truly independent studies have consistently shown that fracking and its related activities pose an unacceptable risk to our water, air, climate, homes and communities. The only way to protect California’s future and move toward clean and sustainable energy resources is to ban fracking.”
Dozens of residents from the communities of Culver City, Ladera Heights and Baldwin Hills shared with the crowd of more than 200 how they have already suffered from the impacts of the Texas-based oil company’s drilling and that fracking would make their problems worse. The study was a result of a lawsuit settlement between environmental and community groups and PXP. It was intended to assess “the feasibility and potential impacts of fracking operations that PXP may conduct in the Inglewood Oil Field” but as the Food & Water Watch analysis reveals, the study falls drastically short of this objective with narrow scope and sweeping conclusions.
“Unfortunately, given the Settlement Agreement terms acceptable to all parties involved and the history of the implementation of the agreement by both Los Angeles County and PXP, one could only assume the results would be favorable to the oil operator and industry,” said Paul Ferrazzi, Executive Director of Citizens Coalition for a Safe Community. “We wish we could have some confidence in this study but given the study’s preparing company’s and the peer reviewer’s direct advocacy for the industry, we do not feel it was adequately conducted, properly reviewed or that the public should take comfort in the conclusions of the study. If anything, this study raises more questions than it answers.
“The public should be able to ask for clarification and further support for the authors’ contentions. CCSC urges the county to use the study as a starting point for further discussion and allow public participation and professional scientific responses independent of the oil and gas industries influence to test the validity, assumptions and conclusions of the study before any fracking is allowed,” said Ferrazzi.
Food & Water Watch’s 10-page analysis of the PXP fracking study can be downloaded here: http://fwwat.ch/PXPfrack
Citizens Coalition for a Safe Community was born in 2008 out of the efforts of grassroots community organizing for the protection of the environmental health and safety of Los Angeles County residents. Its purpose is to alert, educate and empower residents to participate in the governmental process with informed public comment to projects negatively impacting our community.
Contact:
Brenna Norton, bnorton(at)fwwatch(dot)org, 323-843-8446
Paul Ferrazzi, 310-909-6652