Applicability Of California's Health And Safety Code To Oilfield Hazardous Waste Treatment And Disposal

Abstract

Some federal exemptions for oilfield wastes have created confusion for operators in California who believe their waste streams are non-hazardous based upon those federal exemptions. The California Health and Safety Code is applicable to oilfield operations through regulatory programs that include “Business Plan,” some aspects of “Above-ground Petroleum Storage Act (APSA) regulations, and hazardous waste treatment and disposal, to name a few. The regulatory applicability the California law and approaches to environmental enforcement of a local agency is demonstrated through a fictitious composite case drawn from actual cases that resulted in significant fines for the operators.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery © 2014 Pacific Section AAPG, SPE and SEPM Joint Technical Conference, Bakersfield, California, April 27-30, 2014