Oil drilling in South LA (Los Angeles: 2014, neighborhoods, earthquake)

[yby1]

I like reading LA Streets Blog (among other blogs and news outlets) to see what is going on within South LA.

This bit of new regarding Jefferson Park drill site disturbs me:

South LA residents worried about oil drilling in neighborhoods | 89.3 KPCC

Here is a little snippet:

A standing-room-only crowd of more than 300 South Los Angeles residents and community leaders gathered Saturday morning at the Holman United Methodist Church to express concern about new oil wells proposed for a site in the Jefferson Park neighborhood that would use a potentially dangerous extraction technology.
The Murphy Drill Site, operated by Freeport-McMoRan Oil & Gas, is located west of USC in a dense neighborhood where residents say it's unsafe to use a new technique of injecting chemicals — including toxic hydrochloric acid and benzene — deep into the earth to dissolve rocks and shale in order to extract oil.
The modern-day technology, called “acidization,” is different from conventional oil extraction that relies upon vertical, relatively shallow wells. Acidization, by contrast, requires deep, horizontal drilling that spiderwebs beneath neighborhoods.
“It’s a new process being used under very, very old permits and very old regulations,” said Jefferson Park resident Donna Ann Ward. “What happens when those rocks are gone in an earthquake zone? What happens if all of those chemicals, all of those acids are not neutralized? We’re talking about some really toxic stuff.”....

Thankfully there is a current moratorium on drilling at the site, but if this ever gets approved, this can affect other parts of Los Angeles.