Hollywood's Hidden Oil Wells w/ Nalleli Cobo / A People's Climate

“We're real people with human lives and dreams and aspirations. Our lives should not be cut short because of our socioeconomic status or zip code.” 

When we think of oil towns, we think of Texas or the Middle East, not Hollywood. But Los Angeles is home to the largest urban oil field in the United States. 

There are thousands of oil wells operating in the middle of densely populated neighborhoods. Many are hidden in plain sight, disguised as ordinary buildings just feet from homes, schools, and hospitals. 

Approximately one in three LA County residents lives within a mile of an active oil and gas well, and these operations are disproportionately concentrated in Black and Latino communities.

Nalleli Cobo knows what it's like to grow up in the shadow of the oil industry. Only minutes from the University of Southern California, her childhood home in Los Angeles sat just 30 feet from an active oil drilling site. She suffered chronic nosebleeds, asthma, and debilitating health problems, including reproductive cancer. So at just nine years old, she began organizing alongside her mother, knocking on doors and mobilizing neighbors to fight back against the oil industry that was poisoning the community.  

Her organizing helped secure the permanent closure of the Allen Co. drilling facility near her home. She went on to help lead a statewide campaign against Big Oil that secured historic protections for millions of Californians, including new restrictions on oil drilling near homes, schools, and hospitals.

Nalleli joins Host Shilpi Chhotray to talk about the hidden oil infrastructure beneath Los Angeles, the devastating toll of urban drilling on frontline communities, and what she’s learned from taking on the fossil fuel industry.

Key Topics

• LA's hidden oil empire: Los Angeles is home to the largest urban oil field in the country, with thousands of active, idle, and abandoned wells embedded in residential neighborhoods, often disguised as ordinary buildings.
• Sacrifice zones: Oil drilling is disproportionately concentrated in low-income Black and Latino communities. These areas are often called "sacrifice zones” because the communities’ health and livelihoods are sacrificed in exchange for industry profits.
• The human health toll of urban drilling: Nalleli shares her personal experience growing up across the street from an oil well as well as the health struggles she witnessed throughout her community.
• Grassroots organizing against Big Oil: How Nalleli and her mother turned their fight for clean air into a community-wide movement, knocking on 1,700 doors, documenting pollution, mobilizing neighbors, and forcing government agencies to respond.
• From local resistance to statewide policy victories: The campaign that permanently closed and sealed all 21 wells at AllenCo, securing California's landmark SB 1137 setback law, and Los Angeles' decision to permanently phase out oil drilling.
• Fighting fossil fuel power: How organizers defeated Big Oil's $20 million effort to overturn SB 1137, and why Nalleli believes people must keep organizing for a fossil-free future.

Resources:

• South Central Youth Leadership Coalition 
• The Urban Oil Fields of Los Angeles

Credits

Presented by Counterstream Media and The Nation

Powered by Wildseeds Fund

Host: Shilpi Chhotray

Executive Producer: Mindy Ramaker 

Engineer: Dennis Maxwell

Project Manager: Asia Simms

Nalleli Cobo

Nalleli Cobo is an environmental justice activist and storyteller who led a grassroots campaign to permanently shut down a toxic oil-drilling site in her community in March 2020 at the age of 19—an oil site that caused serious health issues for her and others. Her organizing against urban oil extraction has yielded major policy movement within the Los Angeles City Council and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which voted unanimously on bans of new oil exploration and phasing out existing sites.

She co-founded People Not Pozos, which aims to secure a safe and healthy neighborhood, and the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition, which focuses on environmental racism in the community. In March 2020, Nalleli's tireless organizing culminated in the definitive closure of the AllenCo drilling site across the street from her childhood home. In addition, thanks to her work, AllenCo executives are facing over 24 criminal charges for environmental health and safety violations. Moreover, Nalleli's leadership spurred preliminary votes in the City Council in favor of banning oil extraction in the city in 2020.

Nalleli's story and leadership also inspired the enactment of SB 1137, which bans all new oil wells within 3,200 feet of communities in California. Nalleli won the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize, was named on the 2022 Time 100 Next list, California Energy Commission Hall of Fame, Activist of the Year, Agente de Cambio, and more.

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