Skip to main content

Well Stimulation Treatments on the Southern California OCS

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) have jointly prepared a programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) to review the potential environmental impacts of the use of well stimulation treatments on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), Southern California Planning Area. On this website you will find the PEA and additional information resources.

Under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), the Secretary of the Interior oversees the OCS oil and gas program, and is required to balance orderly resource development with protection of the human, marine, and coastal environments. The Secretary must simultaneously ensure that the public receives an equitable return for these resources. The Secretary’s responsibilities under OCSLA have been delegated to BOEM and BSEE, and together the Bureaus are responsible for ensuring that resource exploration, development, and production activities carried out on the OCS (including on the Southern California Planning Area) are done in compliance with the requirements of OCSLA.

The Bureaus propose to allow the use of selected well stimulation treatments on the current active leases and operating platforms on the Southern California Planning Area. Use of the treatments may enable lessees to recover hydrocarbon resources that would otherwise not be recovered from the reservoirs in the 43 active leases that have been and continue to be accessed by existing wells and any new wells in the foreseeable future. This PEA was prepared to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of the proposed approval of the use of well stimulation treatments on the 23 platforms currently in operation on the Southern California Planning Area.

This PEA includes a description of the purpose and need for the proposed action, describes the proposed action, and offers reasonable alternatives to the proposed action. Further, it identifies and evaluates the reasonably foreseeable environmental impacts of the proposed action and alternatives in order to determine whether there is potential for significant environmental impact and therefore whether an environmental impact statement should be prepared.

The Bureaus accepted comments on the Draft PEA from February 22, 2016 through March 23, 2016. The comments are available to browse on this web site.