State of the County topic at Chamber luncheon

"Governor Newsom is trying to put the oil industry out of business in California," said Second District Supervisor Zack Scrivner at the Feb. 21 meeting of the Tehachapi Chamber of Commerce. The industry has faced a 50% reduction in property tax revenue since 2014 and the state of California now uses 1.8 million barrels of oil a day that comes from countries that have poor human rights. California uses 50% of the oil that is produced in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador, a practice that ultimately helps the economy of China who produces much of the equipment used there.

Kern County is now looking at economic diversification in the field of carbon capture, said Scrivner. The CO2 is extracted from oil. Kern County has underground geologic rock formations that form caverns in which the CO2 can be stored. Two companies that are now pursuing an EIR for the process are California Resourses Corporation and Chevron New Energy. The EIR will assure that the process is safe and complement existing industry. The caverns could possibly store as much as 82 metric tons of CO2.

Scrivner also talked about the Mojave Inland Port. Pioneer Partners Inland Port is a private company that is working with the Port of Los Angeles to remove some of the storage space pressure from the ports and is to be located near Mojave.

"The tankers waiting to unload produce more emissions than all of the cars on the road," said Scrivner. Before the project can become a reality, surrounding infrastructure would need to be addressed such as a rail overpass/underpass in Mojave and Rosamond at Sierra Highway. This would also require looking for funding for the truck climbing lanes on Hwy. 58.

Through the B3K (Better Bakersfield, Boundless Kern), Scrivner said the county hopes to attract more service providers to the aerospace companies of East Kern. He also mentioned the Sanborn Solar and Battery project by Terra-Gen and the Department of Defense at Edwards Air Force Base. It is the largest single solar storage site in the world and Scrivner said the project was completed without allowing any tax breaks or waiving any of the government fees that are allowed by the state of California. Scrivner added that many existing solar storage sites are already running at capacity.

Following his talk, Scrivner officially installed the new Chamber of Commerce Board. See related article at https://www.theloopnewspaper.com/story/2023/03/04/community/scrivner-swears-in-new-chamber-board/10526.html