California Resources Corp. on Thursday held a groundbreaking ceremony in Kern County for what’s set to be the state’s first commercial carbon capture and storage project at the Elk Hills oil field near Bakersfield, even as a coalition of environmental and community groups continues to press a CEQA lawsuit against Kern County over its approval.
Michelle Ghafar, a senior lawyer at Earthjustice, said the county violated California Environmental Quality Act by failing to properly define the project’s scope, and by analyzing only a narrow portion of it rather than the full system that includes the CO2 sources and broader environmental impacts.
“When you look at the (Environmental Impact Report) under CEQA, all you’re seeing is that there will be some capture equipment, there will be some pipelines, and there will be wells that will inject that carbon underground,” Ghafar said…