California regulators have rejected 109 fracking permits in 2021, marking the most denials issued in a single year since California permitted fracking in 2015.

California’s Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) has not approved any fracking permits since February, getting a head start on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) 2024 deadline to ban fracking within the state.

byIn 2019, CalGEM approved 220 fracking permits and approved 83 permits in 2020. However, CalGEM has only approved 12 this year, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Fracking is a process whereby high-pressure water is injected into underground rock to extract oil and gas. Although reports show fracking accounts for 2% of California’s oil production, progressives have called for an end to the practice due to its effect on local climates.

Nearly half of the 109 rejected applications were denied due to “urgent climate effects.”

According to the Associated Press,

State oil and gas supervisor Uduak-Joe Ntuk wrote in a September letter to Aera that he could ‘not in good conscience’ grant the permits’ given the increasingly urgent climate effects of fossil-fuel production’ and ‘the continuing impacts of climate change and hydraulic fracturing on public health and natural resources.’

Ntuk further cited “extreme heat, drought, and wildfires” as the dangers posed by climate change in a letter to California-based Aera Energy. Ntuk also argued CalGEM’s regulations must align with California’s public health and climate change goals.

Newsom announced in April that California would phase out fracking by 2024 and end oil extraction entirely by 2045. However, despite Newsom’s goals to phase out the process, California’s legislature rejected a proposal to end fracking in the state earlier this year.

Kern County and the Western States Petroleum Association sued California over the influx of denials, arguing that CalGEM’s rejections rise to the level of a de facto ban on fracking that did not get the California legislature’s approval.

California must respond to Kern County’s lawsuit by December 2.