BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — A plan to build California’s first carbon removal and storage facility received a key vote of approval Monday.
The Kern County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 to give the California Resources Corporation (CRC), the state’s largest oil producer, a permit to build the plant, known as Carbon TerraVault 1.
The company wants to inject and store millions of metric tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide deep beneath an active oil field. Its president and CEO, Francisco Leon, called the supervisors’ vote “a significant step forward” for the company and the county.
“We believe that carbon capture technology will lead to the creation of new energy jobs and improve air quality in Kern County,” Leon said in a statement that CRC issued after the vote.
Although carbon removal has been hailed as a way to help meet the state’s ambitious climate goals, the technology is as yet untested, and many environmental groups have been opposed to the project from the start.
Indeed, dozens of residents and environmental advocates spoke against carbon capture during the hours-long special meeting on Monday, characterizing the project as a risky bet.
“Carbon capture is a dangerous, wildly expensive failure. Instead of propping up fossil fuel interests, California should be investing in the transition to true renewable energy,” said Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, in a news release following the vote.
Kern, the leading oil producing county in California, is looking to the carbon management industry to provide at least some of the jobs and tax revenue it anticipates losing over the next two decades as the state phases out oil drilling.
The initial phase of the Carbon TerraVault project is expected to produce five permanent jobs, according to the county’s environmental impact report.
The supervisors’ vote came after more than an hour of public comment, which was interrupted when one supervisor, Leticia Perez, said she had to leave the meeting because investigators from the Kern County District Attorney’s office were searching her Bakersfield office.
According to a news release published after the meeting, the investigators were from the DA’s Public Integrity Unit, which probes possible criminal violations related to elected officials. Perez is running for reelection and claimed the search was politically motivated.
“I believe Kern County is better than this behavior. I believe these Gestapo tactics that are done by the public integrity unit by the district attorney’s office are illegal, immoral and unethical,” she said before returning to the dais in time for a final vote.
The supervisors’ approval followed a preliminary vote last month by the county’s planning commission. The September hearing included more than four hours of public comment, including from trade union members who said CRC’s facility could create construction jobs and residents who expressed concern about potential leaks and pipeline ruptures.
CRC called that earlier vote a “major milestone” in its years-long efforts to develop carbon storage facilities in California’s Central Valley. In its statement on Monday, the company said it “is committed to the health, safety, and well-being” of communities.
The company is awaiting permits from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to drill wells for injecting carbon. Company leaders hope to begin storing the first 100,000 tons of carbon underground by mid-2025.