In the first major test of how California voters would react to hydraulic fracturing on the ballot, two counties in California approved fracking bans on Tuesday. Opponents of fracking are hoping the movement will spread to other counties.
But a measure to bar the controversial oil production technique in Santa Barbara County — where the oil industry is well-established — fell short. And in San Benito and Mendocino Counties, where the bans passed, they are likely to face court challenges.
While San Benito County’s oil industry is small, the change could be significant for the producers who work there, some of whom regard the law as a confiscation of property rights, also known as a “taking” in legal parlance.
“It’s a regulatory taking because it’s the regulation which is depriving property owners of the ability to extract value from their minerals or property,” says Armen Nahabedian of Citadel Exploration, a company that’s developing an oil project in San Benito.
“So it’s the duty of the county at this point to either allow people to continue to extract value from their property and not enforce the initiative or to compensate them accordingly with the fair market value of what they’ve been deprived of,” he says.