New oil drilling and fracking was put on hold for federal lands in Central California after the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) settled with the State of California and several environmental groups. Lawsuits filed in 2020 succeeded in arguing once again that the environmental review done for a lease-sale project across eight counties and covering more than a million acres failed to adequately address impacts, including those from fracking, on California residents and land.
"The Trump administration recklessly opened Central California up to new oil and gas drilling without considering how fracking can hurt communities by causing polluted groundwater, toxic air emissions, minor earthquakes, climate impacts, and more,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a press release on Monday.
Included in the temporary moratorium for Santa Barbara County is almost the entirety of Vandenberg Space Force Base's 102,000 acres, which had been called "open" for drilling though the base requires security for its missile launches. The federal leases are in rural areas — 1,793 acres near Tepusquet Canyon — and urban ones, such as the more than 3,000 acres in the City of Lompoc and 40 acres near Cate School near Carpinteria.