Added by Stats. 1958, 1st Ex. Sess., Ch. 73.
It is hereby found and determined:
(a)That the people of the State of California have a direct and primary interest in arresting and ameliorating the subsidence and compaction of land in those areas overlying or immediately adjacent to producing oil or gas pools within the State where valuable buildings, harbor installations and other improvements are being injured or imperiled or where subsidence is interfering or may interfere with commerce, navigation and fishery, or where substantial portions of such areas may be inundated if subsidence continues, thereby endangering life, health, safety, public peace, welfare and property;
(b)That in certain of such areas of the State land already has subsided to a great extent and is continuing to subside at an alarming rate, resulting in injury to surface and underground improvements through land movement or the threat of inundation from the sea, necessitating extensive filling and construction of levees and dikes; and requiring the raising, repair and reconstruction of highways, bridges, buildings, utility and transportation facilities, vital national defense installations and other improvements;
(c)That the results of studies by qualified engineers, which have been conducted in certain of such affected areas, indicate that the only feasible method that can be expected to arrest or ameliorate subsidence in such areas is by repressuring subsurface oil and gas formations thereunder and that such repressuring operations, in addition thereto, should increase the amount of oil ultimately recoverable from the formations underlying such areas and protect the oil or gas in such lands from unreasonable waste;
(d)That unit or co-operative operation of such pool or pools in such areas is necessary in order to repressure or maintain pressure in said pool or pools in order to arrest or ameliorate subsidence;
(e)That, in view of the special characteristics of the subsidence problem in such areas, it is necessary, therefore, that the State of California, through authority vested in the State Oil and Gas Supervisor, exercise its power and jurisdiction to require the carrying on of repressuring operations which will tend to arrest or ameliorate subsidence by maintaining or replenishing underground pressures in formations underlying such areas, thereby safeguarding life, health, property, and the public welfare, and to require such co-operative or unit plan or plans as may be necessary for repressuring which tend to arrest or ameliorate subsidence subject to the limitations on the authority of the supervisor contained in this article;
(f)That it is also desirable to encourage the carrying on of voluntary repressuring operations pursuant to voluntary unit or co-operative agreements in order to arrest or ameliorate subsidence, and as a means to that end it is necessary that the power of eminent domain be exercised to acquire the properties of nonconsenting owners of interests in oil and gas under the circumstances and subject to the limitations set forth in this article.