Committee for a Better Shafter v. County of Kern

A lawsuit filed in California Superior Court challenged the decision by the Kern County Board of Supervisors to approve TerraVault I, a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project that proposes “to capture millions of tons of carbon dioxide … over 26 years for storage underneath the 110-year-old Elk Hills oil field.” The petitioners alleged that “[b]y extending the life of the Elk Hills oil field years longer than necessary and incentivizing a massive build-out of new industrial facilities in the County, TerraVault I flies in the face of the core purpose and objective of CCS projects—to meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industrial activity like fossil fuel development in order to reverse the climate crisis.” The petition alleged that the final environmental impact report prepared under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) failed to adequately analyze and mitigate the project’s significant and unavoidable impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, or to analyze reasonable alternatives. The petitioners contended that the County failed to analyze the project’s potential carbon sources as part of the project’s impacts, and also that the County’s analysis revealed that the project could not ensure permanent underground storage of carbon dioxide in perpetuity.