Wildfires are increasingly threatening oil and gas extraction areas, exacerbating potential health risks, a study says

More than 100,000 oil and gas wells across the Western U.S. are located in areas burned by wildfires in recent decades, according to a new study, and about 3 million people live next to wells that could in the future. be in the path of fires made worse by the weather. change.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, said their analysis, which was published in the journal One Earthis the first to examine historical and projected wildfire threats at oil and gas facilities in the U.S. While the public health effects of burned and damaged drilling sites are unclear, researchers said the Study is a necessary step toward understanding potential compound hazards and could help inform policy on future drilling.

“The majority of oil wells in California are currently in areas threatened by wildfires, and many people live in those areas because of the history of oil and gas development in this state,” said David JX González, assistant professor of health. environmental. sciences at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

“The same issues that have plagued us historically still plague us, and it seems like they could lead to new environmental justice issues that haven’t really been explored.”

Gonzalez, the paper’s first author, pointed to Los Angeles and Kern counties as populated areas ripe for oil and gas extraction and also at high fire risk now or in the near future.

In the past, fires in oil and gas fields unrelated to wildfires have led to explosions, and leaks from gas storage tanks in Los Angeles have caused explosions that damaged buildings. Near Bakersfield, dozens of wells have been found to be leaking natural gas, some at explosive levels.

Since 1984, nearly 350,000 people across the western United States have lived within 1 kilometer of a well that was within a burn zone, researchers found. Asians, Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans have faced disproportionately high exposure to wells affected primarily by a handful of megafires in California, Texas and Oklahoma.

Today, across the West, nearly 3 million people live within 1 kilometer of a well that is predicted to be in an area at greatest risk of fire in the coming decades. What’s more, the number of wells in high-risk wildfire areas is expected to almost double by the end of the century.

That means more wells are being drilled in more areas expected to burn.

“I don’t want to say, ‘The sky is falling.’ But there was a greater impact than we thought there would be,” González said. “When you put it all together, it starts to look like this is a problem that hasn’t really been looked at in the past, but has been getting worse and will probably continue to get worse. “It is worrying, especially for people who live near leaking wells.”

While the confluence of fires and drilling is not intended to be alarmist, González said it is an example of compounding factors that have unexplored and potentially significant health effects.

González’s previous research explores the public health impacts of oil and gas development, particularly for marginalized groups who suffer disproportionate adverse health effects. When a fire broke out in Colorado near an oil and gas operation in 2021, he and his colleagues wondered how often drilling sites turned black, whether this could be common in the future, and how worrisome it could be. be the effects.

The team compiled and examined wildfire maps from 1984 to 2019 and analyzed oil and gas drilling records. By lining up where the drilling sites overlapped with the burned areas and adding population data, the researchers estimated how many people lived near the affected wells.

While the health effects of oil and gas wells are becoming better known, there are minimal, if any, studies on the health effects of fires that burn oil and gas facilities. In densely populated areas where buildings burn in intense fires, oil and gas operations could complicate fire response efforts, Gonzalez said.

There are stories with morals. Infernos like the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California caused volatile organic compounds to leak from plastic pipes into the drinking water system.

Many toxic chemicals are already used in oil fields, Gonzalez said. Little is known about what happens when those chemicals combine into plumes of smoke that already pose serious health risks each year.

“We need additional protections to make sure that as wildfires continue, we are protecting the places and people near these industrial activities,” Gonzalez said.

Setback rules that increase the distance between wells and places where people live, work or go to school would be an effective intervention from a public health perspective, González said. Additionally, public land managers must consider the long-term health effects and potential dangers of allowing wells in fire-prone areas.

“With a problem that we know is going to get worse as climate change progresses,” González said, “we have the opportunity to take proactive measures to prevent future damage.”