California’s On Shore Oil Drilling

O n June 29, 2006 the House of Representatives voted to lift the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling in areas that had been offlimits due to the potential environmental impact. In California oil drilling brings to mind the dozen or so offshore oil drilling platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel that are so visible from Highway 101. 

Yet the real action is not happening in the Santa Barbara Channel or on the Texas Gulf Coast, but instead inland in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Although the on shore risk of environmental damage may appear to be less than offshore, there is a tradeoff between spilled oil spreading on the ocean surface versus oil soaking deep into the soil. Far removed from the main highways and, hence, out of the public view is a vast stretch of land nestled against the hills that separate the San Joaquin Valley from the delicate ecosystem of the Carrizo Plain National Monument. Some of the densest oilfields in the world lie on approximately 130,000 acres (200 square miles) of land stretching from McKittrick towards Lost Hills in the north to Maricopa in the south and centered around the town of Taft. 

The area includes the Midway Sunset oilfield, the largest in the U.S. outside of Alaska, currently with 9,935 producing wells, according to the California Department of Conservation database for 2006. Other oilfields are North and South Belridge with over 5,845 active wells, Lost Hills with 2,308 wells, Cymric with 1,652 wells, McKittrick with 395 wells, Buena Vista with 457 wells, and McDonald with 47 producing wells. The principal operators are Aera Energy (a joint venture of Shell and ExxonMobil) and ChevronTexaco. The adjacent Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve was sold by the U.S. Department of Energy to Occidental Petroleum in 1998 for $3.65 billion, in the largest privatization of federal property in U.S. history. At the time of the sale, it had 900 producing wells, according to DOE records. With soaring crude oil prices, that number grew to 2,003 producing wells by January  2006. 

The area also includes numerous electric power plants and cogeneration facilities needed to power the oil rigs and inject steam to pressurize the wells. Whether viewed from the ground or the air, the vast landscape is blighted by a maze of dirt roads, myriad drilling pads, a web of crude oil and steam pipelines, tank farms, and a forest of electric power poles. The oil companies make no secret of their dislike of people coming to photograph the oilfields for fear that public awareness of the sheer intensity of drilling and production will bring about increased regulatory scrutiny. Security guards in white pickup trucks scurry after cars that stop on the shoulders of public roads to photograph the activity.