In the same oil field that experienced a 4,000-gallon spill less than a year ago, eight new oil and gas wells have been approved for Aera Energy in San Ardo. These are the first approvals for oil and gas wells in California outside of Kern County since 2025.
The approvals are for six cyclic steam wells and two steamflood wells. These differ from a traditional well in that they are used to assist with oil recovery and means of production by injecting steam into the reservoir to make the oil less thick and more mobile.
“These enhanced oil recovery methods come with all the risks of traditional production,” says Cooper Kass, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, a watchdog organization which has filed multiple lawsuits regarding California’s oil and gas industry. “They also bring a number of additional risks, including the potential for the high-pressure injection to damage the wellbore and/or crack the surrounding rock, which could lead to migration and groundwater contamination.”
The California Department of Conservation’s Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) is responsible for the environmental review and permit approval for new wells in Monterey County.
Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney with CBD, says that CalGEM’s environmental review considers the eight new wells in isolation rather than analyzing their cumulative impacts as part of an oil field with hundreds of other wells.
In CalGEM’s mitigated negative declaration, an environmental document prepared for Aera Energy, the agency disagreed with CBD’s argument that its review “improperly piecemeals the project.” CalGEM wrote that the eight wells constitute a complete discrete project with “clear independent utility.”
In approving the wells, CalGEM also referenced future projects in the works, including a 92-well project and a separate 100-well project. Aera Energy did not respond to the Weekly’s request for comment on these projects by deadline.