Giving Compass' Take:

• Kate Wheeling and Jim Morris report that Californians are working to increase regulations on oil companies following a series of incidents that revealed inadequate regulation and oversight of the industry. 

• How can regulations better protect Californians? What can be done about existing oil wells and spills? 

• Learn how cities are suing oil companies over global warming. 

The industry, so far as modernization goes, outpaced its regulators: Since its creation in 1915, the state's Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources has operated almost entirely with paper records.

DOGGR's Coastal District office sits in the heart of downtown Orcutt, in the shadow of a cell tower disguised as an oil derrick. Inside, a modest conference room is lined with black-and-white photos of early oil operations. A lone table is covered with a mess of thick binders; more fill shelves in the hallway. The binders are stuffed with paper records of every reported oil spill in the district, which stretches from Santa Cruz County down through Santa Barbara County. Only in 2015 did DOGGR finally begin the process of digitizing a century of records.

In 2015, DOGGR admitted it had allowed thousands of wells to inject wastewater into underground aquifers that should have been protected as possible sources of freshwater.

DOGGR vowed to make swift and sweeping reforms to its underground injection program in 2011, after scalding steam, oil, and poisonous gases began erupting in an oil field in Kern County, resulting in the death of a worker named Robert David Taylor.

Now, conflicts over injection are boiling over in communities across California—not just in the oil industry's stronghold of Kern County. People in Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo counties, fed up with state regulators, are turning to ballot initiatives and lawsuits to block injection and protect their groundwater.

Only recently did DOGGR begin tracking and regulating the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the state—a technique that is not governed by the same rules as underground injection wells, even though it involves blasting water and chemicals down wells at high pressures to crack rock formations and release oil trapped below ground.

Read the full article about Califonrnia oil regulations by Kate Wheeling and Jim Morris at Pacific Standard.