Check this out, a new complaint, filed this week in a federal court in California.
[We won’t be offering all that much comment on this because it is one of ours.]
This a takings challenge to a California statute which establishes a purported 3,200-foot safety zone around “sensitive receptors” that “prohibits the drilling of new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet
of “sensitive receptors,” which includes most places where the public works, lives, and plays.” Complaint at 1.
The long and the short of it is that this is remarkably similar to the case that started it all, Pennsylvania Coal:
Thus, by prohibiting the drilling of oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of “sensitive receptors,” California unfairly requires mineral estate owners to bear the burden of the State’s policy choices regarding climate change. See Penn. Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 416 (1922) (Holmes, J.) (“We are in danger of forgetting that a strong public desire to improve the public condition is not enough to warrant achieving the desire by a shorter cut than the constitutional way of paying for the change.”).
Complaint at 3.
What gives with the graphic above? It’s our cheeky take on the film “There Will Be Blood” about Daniel (I’m an oil man) Plainview and the rise of the California oil and gas industry in Bakersfield and other parts of southern California, with its infamous “I reeeeeeach over and I drink your milkshake” scene.