California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) declared a state of emergency in Porter Ranch, Calif., on Jan. 7, following the failure of one of the world’s top drilling contractors to plug Southern California Gas Co.’s Aliso Canyon gas leak. Since last fall, the utility’s storage system—depleted oil wells located thousands of feet underground—has emitted more than 1.6 million metric tons of methane in the Los Angeles area.
Brown’s executive order creates emergency regulations and a daily inspection program for the state’s gas distributors, pouring all available state and federal resources into preventing further fallout from deteriorating and problematic transmission infrastructure.