Local News in Brief : Council Rejects Oil-Drilling Request

To applause from area homeowners, the Torrance City Council unanimously denied a Delaware-based company’s request to extract 27 million barrels of oil from beneath a southeast Torrance neighborhood.

The council late Tuesday rejected the proposal by Kelt Energy Inc. to drill 108 slanted wells from a 2.2-acre site to collect oil beneath an adjoining 560-acre area.

Many of the homeowners have opposed the project for years, saying the Kelt project would cause noise, dust, gas leaks, ground movement and possible damage to surface structures.

Kelt officials noted that similar projects in Wilmington, Long Beach, Huntington Beach and other parts of Torrance have operated without problems for years.

The area, which has about 2,000 houses and businesses, is an oil field that has already been tapped by standard drilling methods. To force out the remaining oil, Kelt proposed pumping salty water from deep underground into some of the wells and collecting the oil at the surface through “recovery wells.”

Kelt has leased the mineral rights to 77% of the acreage. If the project had been approved, each of the lessors would have received about $2,000 a year, a study said.