Oil rig extracts petroleum in Culver City, California, on May 16, 2008, as the price of crude oil roses to nearly USD 128 per barrel, prompting oil companies to reopen numerous wells across the nation that were considered tapped out and unprofitable decades ago when oil sold for one-fifth the price or less. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS (Photo credit should read GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)
BEVERLY HILLS, CA - MAY 7: A student runs laps at Beverly Hills High School near an oil well tower (L) covered in flower designs May 7, 2003 in Beverly Hills, California. The track sits near abandoned oil wells that allegedly leak cancer-causing fumes, according to a complaint filed by Erin Brockovich and legal colleague Ed Masry. The action by Brockovich, whose fight against environmental pollution inspired the film that won Julia Roberts an Academy Award, alleges that the fumes have created a cancer cluster of 280 cases of Hodgkin's disease, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and thyroid cancer since the 1970s, a rate that is 20 times higher than the national average. Masry's firm is representing 25 personal-injury claims against the school district and Beverly Hills. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
LONG BEACH, CA - MAY 29: An oil well pumps next to residential units under construction on Signal Hill May 29, 2003 in Long Beach, California. The Signal Hill Oil Field, now known as the Long Beach Oil Field, reportedly had the world's highest oil production per acre by the mid-twentieth century. Hundreds of companies and individuals became rich on minute leases, some locations so close that derrick legs overlapped. New housing and stores are now being built among operating oil wells. Farther north, a cancer scare has swept over Beverly Hills High School where environmental activist Erin Brockovich and her boss, lawyer Ed Masry, are alleging that toxic fumes from oil wells on the campus have created a "cancer cluster" that is 20 times higher than the national average. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
Homes stand while pumpjacks operate near a hydraulic fracturing (fracking) test well at the Inglewood Oil field in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 19, 2012. The Inglewood Oil Field is a steady source of domestic oil and natural gas as well as the second most productive oil field in the entire L.A. Basin. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Industry, Oil, pic: circa 1930, The large oilfield at Venice, near Los Angeles, USA (Photo by Popperfoto via Getty Images/Getty Images)
