As California’s largest oil producer, California Resources Corp. is the poster child for both the industry’s slow death as it runs out of oil, and dangerous reinvention as it pushes Carbon Capture and Storage technology that is a bad bet for the public and the environment. The progeny of a 2014 Occidental Petroleum spinoff of declining oil wells1 holding $5 billion in inherited debt, CRC filed for bankruptcy in 2020. It survived, swapping debt for equity. In the last two years, as oil production continues to decline, it’s gone on a buying spree to puff up its assets with low-producing and idle wells while state regulators allow CRC to directly put Californians’ wallets and communities’ public health on the line.
Years ago, major oil companies saw California’s oil future and hightailed it out. They faced steadily declining production, stiff competition, high expenses and low oil prices, plus billions of dollars in environmental liabilities for well plugging and cleanups they preferred to skirt. Shell and ExxonMobil spun their 1997 joint venture—Aera Energy—2 off to foreign investors in 2022 for the same reasons as Occidental.
