By Andrew Sheeler | The Sacramento Bee
Critics attack Trump plan to allow new oil leases, fracking in California
The Bureau of Land Management hosted a public meeting in San Luis Obispo on May 22, 2019, about its plan to reopen public lands to new oil and gas leasing, including fracking. BY LAURA DICKINSON
The Trump administration signed off on an order Thursday that’s intended to open up more than 1 million acres of land in California, from the Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley, to fracking and conventional oil drilling.
The Department of the Interior, through the Bureau of Land Management, released the record of decision that ends a five-year moratorium on public land fracking and drilling.
Fracking is short for “hydraulic fracturing,” where drillers shoot a high-pressure stream of water or other chemicals into rock in order to crack it open to extract the oil or gas within.
The Thursday decision opens up for leasing 1.2 million acres of land in Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura counties.
