A Historic Win: City of L.A. Votes to Ban Neighborhood Oil Drilling!
We did it! After more than a decade of relentless community organizing, frontline residents and the STAND-L.A. coalition have won a historic victory to ban new and phase out existing oil drilling and completely phase out urban extraction across the City of Los Angeles. Read the full story to explore the inspiring details of this hard-fought victory!
Frontline residents and the STAND-L.A. coalition have secured a monumental, hard-fought environmental justice victory more than a decade in the making!
On September 28, the Los Angeles City Council formally approved a landmark ordinance banning new oil and gas extraction and requiring all existing drilling to be phased out citywide over the next 20 years. The vote marks the beginning of the end of toxic urban drilling in the city, and a monumental win powered by residents who refuse to accept pollution in their neighborhoods as inevitable.
The path to this victory was long and fiercely contested. Although the City Council first approved the phaseout in 2022, oil industry lawsuits overturned it in 2024. Undeterred, STAND-L.A. organizers and frontline residents did not retreat. They regrouped, mobilized neighbors, sustained public pressure, and returned to City Hall to win the policy again.
The movement began in 2010, when University Park residents experiencing foul odors, headaches, and unexplained illnesses refused to look the other way. Their courage drew together neighbors, public health advocates, and environmental justice organizations across Los Angeles, laying the groundwork for the Standing Together Against Neighborhood Drilling-Los Angeles (STAND-L.A.) coalition.
Since 2013 Liberty Hill has served as a founding member, strategic partner, and steadfast supporter of the STAND-L.A. coalition. Ending neighborhood oil drilling is a core pillar of Liberty Hill’s Agenda for a Just Future, and we remain committed to resourcing frontline leadership, strengthening coalition power, and staying in this fight through full implementation of the ordinance and beyond.
The City of Los Angeles is home to approximately 1,900 oil wells, with concentrations in low-income Black and Latino neighborhoods like South Los Angeles and Wilmington. For generations, these residents have borne the brunt of drilling impacts that are linked to asthma, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, preterm birth, and other long-term health defects. This ordinance affirms what communities have said for years.
With the ordinance now approved, frontline communities can begin advancing a healthier future grounded in community-led land stewardship, environmental restoration, and public reinvestment. The work ahead will require continued vigilance to ensure the phaseout is implemented fully, equitably, and without delay.
This historic win belongs to the residents and organizers who led with courage for more than a decade. It is proof that when communities organize, build lasting coalitions, and fight together, they can transform Los Angeles.
