Testosterone Replacement Therapy in McKittrick, CA

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A near nonstop rainy season has led to a Spring super bloom.

The Temblor Range off Highway 58 east of California Valley is currently covered in vibrant colors as California’s super bloom takes off.

If you drive east of Santa Margarita, you’ll see plenty of yellow, orange, and blue--with mountainsides and valleys covered in wildflowers.

“I’m in Paso and we have some poppies in our backyard and stuff but nothing like this,” said Paso Robles Resident Levi J.

People from across the region drove to Shell Creek Road on Wednesday to see the striking sight.

“It’s spectacular. We’re really lucky to live in a place like this where you’ve got this much beauty and wildlife right at your doorstep,” said Atascadero Resident Kevin Zimmer, who missed the last super bloom but wasn’t taking any chances this time around.

“Five or six years ago, I missed the last really good bloom and we’ve had all this drought since then,” he said. “This is definitely the best it’s been in the last decade.”

Others are seeing the explosion of colorful wildflowers for the first time.

“This is pretty cool. I’m originally from Arizona so, it’s not green like this,” said Levi. “It feels like it’s pretty unique, a pretty special thing.”

And it’s not just people enjoying the beautiful sight.

“My little dog is super happy to see it all and we might go around to a couple of different places,” said J.

And it doesn’t end at Shell Creek Road. The vibrant colors kept getting better while driving east on Highway 58 past California Valley.

“Right by where they’ve got Highway 58 closed off going any further east, it’s right at the junction of 7-mile road and Highway 58. The temblor range, that end of the temblor range is just covered with yellow flowers right now,” explained Zimmer.

Visitors and locals were driving up to the highway closure to see the mountains covered in vibrant yellow.

“I was hoping it would be this way,” said Zimmer.

The super bloom is attracting visitors from all over--but some advice--try to avoid trampling the flowers so that others can enjoy this beautiful sight.

“I’m not gonna trample anything though, I’m gonna stay on the trail man,” said Levi.

Highway 58 is closed between California Valley and McKittrick due to recent landslides as crews repave the highway.

It is expected to reopen by the weekend.

Copyright 2023 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

SACRAMENTO —

What’s striking about passage of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s legislation to penalize Big Oil’s alleged greed is the sea change it represents in California policy.

A century ago and well past World War II, the oil industry could do no wrong in California. It was encouraged to drill, baby, drill. And this burgeoning state reaped the economic benefits.

In fact, California is still the only major oil-producing state that doesn’t impose an extraction tax for pumping the goo out of the ground. Oil companies do pay property taxes on underground reserves. But it’s a much lighter hit than an extraction tax.

In 2006, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have taxed extraction and raised $1 billion annually. The oil industry waged a $95-million opposition campaign. Three years later, the Legislature passed an extraction tax but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it.

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Now, California’s governor rails about “greedy” oil companies “fleecing” motorists — ”lying and gouging Californians to line their own pockets.”

The bill Newsom signed last week authorizes the California Energy Commission, which he appoints, to regulate oil refinery profits. It can establish a cap on profits and sock refineries that exceed it with what he calls a “price-gouging penalty.”

This governor brags about bringing “Big Oil to their knees.”

March 28, 2023

Newsom’s scorn — and the Democratic-dominated Legislature’s — is in sharp contrast to the hospitable cheering-on that the oil industry heard from Sacramento throughout most of the 20th century.

Only one Democratic lawmaker voted against Newsom’s bill and she was promptly punished by Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood). New Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains presumably represented her oil-rich Kern County district’s views by opposing the measure. The speaker then yanked her off the influential Business and Professions Committee.

That wouldn’t have happened in the past on an anti-oil bill.

But today, bashing and voting against the oil industry apparently plays well with Democratic voters in deep blue California.

First, people are concerned about climate change and planet-altering greenhouse gas emissions spewed by gasoline automobiles.

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In a poll last year by the Public Policy Institute of California, about half the people surveyed said they’d considered buying an electric vehicle. And by 3-to-1, they prioritized developing alternative energy — wind, solar, hydrogen — over expanding oil and gas production.

Second, there’s greater public angst over oil company actions that hit motorists directly. We pay far more than the national average for a gallon of gasoline — $2.61 more at one point last year when our cost at the pump exceeded $6.

Compare that with the 25 cents or so I initially paid for a gallon of gas in the 1950s when oil was a welcomed job producer in California.

Part of the difference between what we and the rest of the country pay is attributable to state and local taxes. There are also fees to fund environmental programs, mostly to fight climate change. And there’s the cost of mixing a special anti-smog blend of fuel.

But those costs don’t account for all the extra price at the pump. Now, the Energy Commission will have the legal authority to dig into refineries’ books and discover the mystery.

And maybe it can find out why just before every three-day weekend — especially during highly traveled summer months — the pump price suddenly escalates. But I think we already know that answer: Oil companies can get away with it because we need to fill up.

California

March 27, 2023

Back in the day, oil played a huge role in developing California and boosting workers into the middle class.

In 1903, California became the No. 1 oil-producing state in the nation. We traded that position back and forth with Oklahoma up until the Great Depression when a glut developed because people didn’t drive so much. Oil production slowed, then escalated again during World War II. But today we’re only the seventh-largest producer of crude oil.

In the 1920s, much of the Los Angeles Basin was covered with a forest of wooden oil derricks. Many of us still remember an active oil well on the Beverly Hills High School campus. Derricks dotted the Summerland Beach area just south of Santa Barbara.

California pumped 36% of the nation’s oil in 1923. Today, 100 years later, it’s down to 3%. Those in power can hardly wait, it seems, to rid the state of its remaining production.

My own family has directly experienced the dramatic change in public policy and attitudes toward oil.

My dad left his family’s depressed Tennessee farm in the 1920s because he heard there were decent paying jobs in California’s booming oil fields. There were.

A large Skelton clan came with him — his dad, brother, two uncles and some cousins. Most went back to Tennessee farming when oil companies laid off workers during the Depression. Fortunately, my dad stayed and I was born in exquisite Santa Barbara.

With only an eighth-grade education — there was no high school near his isolated farm — Dad supported a family on an oil worker’s pay, rising through the ranks from roustabout to toolpusher and finally assistant foreman at Shell’s Ventura lease. We were proud of him.

I even became an oil worker my first summer out of high school. But I took a 33% pay cut to work for the Ventura Star-Free Press the next summer. My best investment ever.

I’ve had my own evolution on oil: Moving from strong support of offshore drilling to adamant opposition because of repeated, calamitous spills.

Today, one of my dad’s granddaughters — my daughter — is trying to rid California and the world of fossil fuel because, she believes, it threatens to destroy the planet. She’d like to eliminate her grandpa’s occupation.

She’s a Biden administration advisor trying to find clean-energy jobs for fossil-fuel workers.

Dad probably would have been fine with that, but cautioned her not to be rambunctious. Gas cars are going to be around for a while yet.

Until the recent Canadian wildfires sent plumes of smoke over the densely populated cities around the Great Lakes and along the Eastern Seaboard, few people in those cities had ever experienced the weird orange haze of a forest fire or the temporary spike in fine particulates and pervasive smell of smoke. Understandably, many people reacted with alarm. We city-dwellers typically only see wildfires on television, usually alongside footage of fire crews and water-bombers valiantly trying to put them out, which creates the impression they are somehow unnatural events that must be avoided at all costs. In reality, forest fires are not only natural but essential to the life cycle of the forest ecosystem.

Unfortunately, politicians, reporters and climate activists rushed in to exploit this unusual event by pushing their agenda. They made a lot of glib claims about climate change causing wildfires to become more common. For instance, Prime Minister Trudeau tweeted: “We’re seeing more and more of these fires because of climate change.”

That statement is false. Amid the smokescreen of untrue claims, nobody seems to have bothered looking up the numbers. Canadian forest fire data are available from the Wildland Fire Information System. Wildfires have been getting less frequent in Canada over the past 30 years. The annual number of fires grew from 1959 to 1990, peaking in 1989 at just over 12,000 that year, and has been trending down since. From 2017 to 2021 (the most recent interval available), there were about 5,500 fires per year, half the average from 1987 to 1991.

The annual area burned also peaked 30 years ago. It grew from 1959 to 1990, peaking in 1989 at 7.6 million hectares before declining to the current average of 2.4 million hectares per year over 2017-21. And 2020 marked the lowest point on record with only 760,000 hectares burned.

The record shows that the fraction of fires each year that become major (more than 200 hectares in size) peaked back in 1964 at 12.3 per cent. From 1959 to 1964, it averaged 8.7 per cent then dropped to 3.4 per cent in the early 1980s. As of 2017-21 interval, it had climbed again to 6.0 per cent, but that’s still well below the average 60 years ago.

Residents of a close-knit California community are on borrowed time after energy company Berry Petroleum sent out offer letters to buy up properties including residences.

McKittrick is located 14 miles northwest of Taft with a population of 102 residents, according to the census bureau. The town is in the center of a large oil-producing region that Berry Petroleum is trying to buy out.

McKittrick resident Mary Reeves said only a handful of the people who live in town are homeowners. Most residents rent property and feel like their backs are against the wall when it comes to the potential buyout, Reeves said.

“I’m concerned for all of us out here. The current housing market right now, how it is, it’s really hard to find some place. If we do find a place its gonna be way more than what we are paying here and that goes for everybody,” Reeves said.

The Reeves family moved into their McKittrick home in May after living in hotels for 7 months. She said the Berry deal would put her family in a very hard position and is worried her family will have to go back to living in hotels.

“We couldn’t find anything in the city limits so we had to go live in hotels in SLO [San Luis Obispo] County,” Reeves said.

McKittrick Elementary School is placed in the top 10 percent of schools in the state based on test scores for the 2018-19 school year, according to the Public School Review. Parents are worried their children won’t have the same advantages at larger schools in Kern County if they’re forced to move.

McKittrick resident Alejandra Arroyo, originally from Los Angeles County, moved to McKittrick for the one-on-one teaching style McKittrick Elementary is well known for.

“We made a home out here,” Arroyo said. “And the education for the kids is really badass.”

“My daughter has learned so much,” Arroyo said. “I feel like removing the education for the kids, It’s not fair.”

Some of the residents put partial blame on Governor Gavin Newsom’s policy that created buffers for communities who live close to oil fields.

Several McKittrick residents said that they would not mind the oil fields being so close because the economic and educational impacts for their children would outweigh the health benefits stated by the policy.

“I get that, make it a green state,” Bates said. “But we’re still going to need oil inside those electric machines,” Bates said.

Governor Newsom’s office responded to these complaints saying that the policy in question is meant to hold oil companies accountable for their “greed.”

“At a time when oil companies are making more money than ever before, California’s new setback law finally holds these companies responsible for ensuring pollution from their operations does not negatively impact the health of nearby communities. The law’s ban on new drilling within a science-backed setback distance of 3,200 feet from homes, schools, and businesses open to the public will keep new activity away from California communities, and the pollution controls required for existing wells within 3,200 feet of these facilities will protect the health of Californians nearby. These protections are backed by a broad coalition of community leaders, environmental advocates and legislative leaders who are focused on ensuring that the health of our communities is prioritized over Big Oil’s greed,” his office said in a statement.

Berry Petroleum cited the aforementioned policy in a property purchase offer letter of intent to homeowners.

The letter reads:

“Under the Bill, your property would be within setback distance. Berry is therefore prepared to purchase your property at a market value plus premium. We believe this would allow you to find a replacement home outside the setback distance and help preserve Berry’s operations and benefits to the local community.”

Get the full story: Read more.

There’s a huge problem looming as California moves beyond fossil fuels: How to get its declining oil industry to plug and remediate tens of thousands of oil and gas wells that already sit idle or won’t be producing for much longer.

And unfortunately, it’s looking like the companies responsible for the wells, tanks and pipelines won’t end up paying anything close to what it will take to clean up the mess they leave behind.

All told, it could cost as much as $21.5 billion to clean and decommission California’s onshore oil and gas operations, according to a recent report commissioned by Carbon Tracker, a financial think tank that analyzes the effects of the energy transition. That’s so much money that even if in-state oil producers were forced to put all their future profits toward those cleanup obligations, they would still fall more than $15 billion short.

It would be pure fantasy to expect California’s oil industry, whose in-state production peaked in the 1980s and has been declining for years, to voluntarily fulfill all of its cleanup obligations, because it won’t even make enough money to pay for it. Without swift and dramatic changes, much of the cleanup costs will fall to taxpayers. That would be a shameful abrogation of responsibility by an industry that has for more than a century profited mightily from extracting California’s underground deposits while fueling the climate crisis, fouling the air and contaminating soil and water.

Opinion

April 27, 2023

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That’s why California regulators and lawmakers need to act quickly to reduce the burden to taxpayers and force the industry to fork over a lot more cleanup money, while it’s still in a financial position to do so.

While the oil industry and state regulators dispute some of the numbers in the Carbon Tracker report, its conclusions largely reinforce what has been clear for years: The oil and gas wells that fossil fuel companies are leaving unplugged and idle are a multibillion-dollar problem.

The report found that less than 1% of the amount needed to decommission California’s oilfields has been set aside in bonds that can be used by regulators if companies go out of business or walk away. And as ProPublica reporter Mark Olalde wrote, “time is running out to rectify the funding shortfall.” The report estimates that $3.65 billion — or 58% of the remaining proceeds from existing wells — will be generated during the next two years.

Opinion

May 8, 2023

California’s Department of Conservation Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM, said that it shares the concerns raised in Carbon Tracker’s report, but that its data show more bond money has been set aside than stated in the report and that it has been making progress plugging idle wells using $100 million in new state funding.

“We issue far more permits to plug and abandon wells than any other activity,” spokesperson Jacob Roper said, “which means existing oil companies are plugging more of their own wells than they are drilling.”

Roper said the department is “still in the process of implementing” a 2019 law that gave it broad authority to increase the amount of cleanup money oil producers must set aside, up to $30 million per operator.

Increasing those funds or imposing higher fees on the industry could reduce how much taxpayers will be on the hook for cleanup, said Dwayne Purvis, the Texas-based petroleum engineering consultant who wrote the report. “But the fundamental situation is upside down. There’s just not enough blood in the turnip.”

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Opinion

May 22, 2023

That doesn’t mean it’s futile. State regulators and lawmakers could be doing a lot more by adopting dramatically larger bond requirements, accelerated deadlines for plugging wells, and legislation to reduce incentives for operators to transfer wells to smaller companies that are more likely to bail on their cleanup obligations.

Policymakers should also be pursuing more sweeping measures, such as industrywide fees or other mechanisms that would hold more fossil fuel interests accountable, including past operators and major oil companies that may not own the wells but have been posting record profits and could easily afford to pay for the upstream effects of their products.

Addressing this problem should be an urgent environmental priority because oil and gas wells release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and health-damaging air pollution that puts front-line communities, from Wilmington to Kern County, at increased risk of asthma, preterm births, reductions in lung function and other health problems.

Opinion

May 28, 2023

The California Independent Petroleum Assn., an industry trade group, criticized the Carbon Tracker report, saying it overestimated the costs by calculating what it would cost the state to plug wells, which is higher than what it costs the oil industry. But it provided no estimate of its own.

The group said that companies spent more than $400 million last year to plug and remediate 6,500 idle wells, that many operators have set aside additional funds for future remediation and that it’s best to leave it to individual companies to take care of their own liabilities.

But the group at the same time suggested tapping public funds, including more than $4 billion for plugging abandoned wells included in the bipartisan infrastructure law President Biden signed in 2021, as well as millions in additional state money available to regulators. The industry clearly wants to have it both ways.

We can’t rely on wishful thinking or flimsy assurances from the petroleum industry that it can clean up this mess on its own, because the numbers show otherwise. Oil companies caused this problem, but it’s public officials’ job to make sure they can’t wash their hands of it and stick us with the bill.