"While Gov. Newsom touted the state’s environmental efforts at the UN climate summit, toxic spills and a new law speeding drilling tarnished its reputation at home."

"Thousands of gallons of oil and toxic wastewater poured out of a pipe running through a Monterey County oil field on Friday, Dec. 5, in the latest of several recent spills around the state. The pipe released 168 gallons of oil and nearly 4,000 gallons of toxic wastewater from drilling operations managed by Aera Energy at the San Ardo Oil Field, which sits near olive groves, row crops and ranches at the southern end of the county’s $5 billion agricultural region. 

For environmental justice communities and their allies, it’s yet another sign that California is failing to live up to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s claims of being a global climate leader.

Over the past three months, California has averaged more than 70 oil spills per month, with petroleum polluting ports, harbors, streams and oil field soils, state data shows. In the past month alone, oil has poured out of malfunctioning pipes and tanks into ditches and dirt roads in Kern County, onto the shoulder of a highway in Tulare County, into a seasonally dry creek bed that feeds Los Angeles County’s Santa Clara River and into another creek that ultimately flows into the Santa Clara, known as the only wild river in Southern California.

The day before a pipe failed at the San Ardo oil field last week—the 95th spill in that oil field over the past 20 years, according to state data—a drilling rig off the coast of Santa Barbara County dumped crude oil into the Pacific Ocean."

Liza Gross reports for Inside Climate News December 12, 2025. [2]