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45-503: The Semitropic field is one of the oil and gas fields in the southern San Joaquin Valley which is underneath the bottomlands of the valley, rather than in the hills which surround it. Most of the largest fields are in the lower parts of the foothills to the mountains on either side of the valley, including monstrous reservoirs such as the Kern River and Midway-Sunset fields; in the bottomlands,

90-598: A Canadian geoscientist and Fellow of Post Carbon Institute , published a report in December 2013 analyzing the assumptions behind the EIA's forecast of Monterey tight oil production and the USC's forecast of resulting job and tax revenue growth. He found the EIA report's assumptions on prospective well productivity to be "extremely optimistic," and the total estimate of 15.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil "highly overstated." He also found

135-671: A cumulative production of close to 2 billion barrels (320,000,000 m ) of oil by the end of 2006, it is the third largest oil field in California, after the Midway-Sunset Oil Field and the Wilmington Oil Field , and the fifth largest in the United States. Its estimated remaining reserves, as of the end of 2006, were around 476 million barrels (75,700,000 m ), the second largest in the state. It had 9,183 active wells,

180-679: A lot of discussion around the Monterey Shale that it doesn't require fracking, that acidizing will be enough to open up the rock," said Chris Faulkner, chief executive officer of Breitling Oil and Gas. The Monterey Formation underlies the southern half of the San Joaquin Valley , a prime agricultural region. The possibility of environmental damage has caused some farmers in Kern County to press for close regulation of hydraulic fracturing. Opponents say that hydraulic fracturing poses risks in

225-655: A model operator and applicant during the proceedings. Based on the Paleobiology Database: Based on Fierstine et al (2012) and the Paleobiology Database. A majority of these are preserved in diatomite , with many, especially the most complete ones, recovered from a diatomaceous earth mine at Lompoc . Based on the Paleobiology Database: Based on the Paleobiology Database: The Monterey Formation contains some of

270-462: A subsidiary of Occidental. Vintage still runs the field as of early 2010. 35°34′51″N 119°29′20″W  /  35.5808°N 119.4890°W  / 35.5808; -119.4890 Kern River Oil Field The Kern River Oil Field is a large oil field in Kern County in the San Joaquin Valley of California , north-northeast of Bakersfield in the lower Sierra foothills. Yielding

315-523: A thickness of about 100 feet (30 m). Beneath this unit are several other rock units with no oil, including 4,000 feet (1,200 m) of the Monterey Formation ; but underneath several other rock layers yet another oil pool was found in the Oligocene -age Vedder Sands , at a depth of 17,610 feet (5,370 m). This unit produced from only a single well, from 1975 until it was abandoned in 1977, and

360-462: A total of 136 wells in the Monterey formation that would use cyclic steam injection to produce tight oil . In 2013, the county planning commission declined its staff's recommendation to approve the project, calling for more study on concerns raised by environmentalists about greenhouse-gas emissions. The County Board of Supervisors approved the proposed project on November 18, 2013 and SME was cited as

405-686: Is already naturally fractured, and it may be many years, if ever, before the Monterey becomes a significant producer of shale oil. The Monterey Formation strata vary. Its lower Miocene members show indications of weak coastal upwelling , with fossil assemblages and calcareous -siliceous rocks formed from diatoms and coccolithophorids . Its middle and upper Miocene upwelling-rich assemblages, and its unique highly siliceous rocks from diatom-rich plankton, became diatomites , porcelainites , and banded cherts . It generally dates to between 16 to 7 million years ago, but some sections are as early as 18 million years old or as young as 6 million years old. Most of

450-454: Is immediately adjacent to the east. The nearest large and still active oil field is the Lost Hills field, about 13 miles (21 km) to the west-northwest. Terrain in the vicinity of the oil field is almost table-flat, with elevations ranging from approximately 250 to 280 feet (85 m) above sea level throughout the productive region, with a very slight gradient from south to north towards

495-611: Is near the city of Monterey, California . The Monterey Formation is the major source-rock for 37 to 38 billion barrels of oil in conventional traps such as sandstones. This is most of California's known oil resources. The Monterey has been extensively investigated and mapped for petroleum potential , and is of major importance for understanding the complex geological history of California. Its rocks are mostly highly siliceous strata that vary greatly in composition, stratigraphy , and tectono-stratigraphic history. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated in 2014 that

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540-688: Is one of many contiguous oil fields along the eastern edge of the southern San Joaquin Valley, lying between the Kern Front field to the northwest and the Kern Bluff field to the southeast, on the other side of the Kern River. Directly north of the Kern River field is the large Mount Poso Oil Field , entirely in the Sierra foothills, and to the northeast is the Round Mountain Oil Field . Unlike some of

585-560: Is produced from the Monterey itself. The Monterey formation is the source for such giant oilfields as the Kern River , Elk Hills , Midway-Sunset Oil Field , and probable source for the overlying North and South Belridge Oil Fields . Monterey Formation oil was discovered at the Orcutt Oil Field in the Santa Maria Basin of Santa Barbara County in 1901. This was quickly followed by other Monterey discoveries nearby, including

630-595: Is used to irrigate crops in the San Joaquin Valley. 35°27′23″N 118°59′00″W  /  35.4564°N 118.9834°W  / 35.4564; -118.9834 Monterey Formation The Monterey Formation is an extensive Miocene oil-rich geological sedimentary formation in California, with outcrops of the formation in parts of the California Coast Ranges , Peninsular Ranges , and on some of California's off-shore islands. The type locality

675-599: The Cat Canyon Oil Field and Lompoc Oil Field . Each of these early Monterey discoveries depended on natural fractures in the Monterey. The Monterey Formation is one of the reservoirs in the Elk Hills Oil Field as well as one of the reservoirs (Belridge Diatomite) of the Lost Hills Oil Field , both located in Kern County . Major Monterey production was also discovered in offshore oil fields, such as

720-754: The South Ellwood Oil Field in the Santa Barbara Channel, and the Point Arguello Field in the Santa Maria Basin. The North Shafter and Rose oil fields of Kern County, which produce primarily from the Monterey Formation, were discovered in 1983, but attempts to produce the oil have not been highly economic. Some horizontal wells were drilled in the Rose field in the early 2000s, with 2,500-foot lateral lengths and single-stage open-hole fracs;

765-458: The Tulare Lake bed. The Semitropic Ridge, a gentle topographic prominence with a mean elevation of about twenty feet above the oil field, parallels the field to the southwest, separating it from Interstate 5. Climate is typical of the valley bottom in the south, which is arid . Temperatures in the summer routinely exceed 100 °F (38 °C) on typically cloudless days. Rain falls mainly in

810-601: The 1,750 square mile Monterey Formation could, as an unconventional resource, yield about 600 million barrels of oil, from tight oil contained in the formation, down sharply from their 2011 estimate of a potential 15.4 billion barrels. An independent review by the California Council on Science and Technology found both of these estimates to be "highly uncertain." Despite intense industry efforts, there has been little success to date (2013) in producing Monterey-hosted tight oil/shale oil, except in places where it

855-619: The Kern River Oil Field was originally drilled by Standard Oil of California , and attained a depth of 6,986 feet (2,129 m) below ground surface. The granitic basement rocks were of late Jurassic age. According to a California State Historical Marker of the original site in Kern County, "Oil was discovered at 70 feet (21 m) in 1899, when Tom Means persuaded Roy Elwood and Frank Wiseman, aided by Jonathan, Bert, Jed, and Ken Elwood, George Wiseman, and John Marlowe, to dig here for oil. On June 1, 1899, 400 feet (120 m) feet to

900-449: The Monterey Shale widely economic through hydraulic fracturing; to date it has been economic only in those limited locations already naturally fractured. Richard Behl, a geology professor who heads the "Monterey And Related Sediments" (MARS) consortium at California State University Long Beach , said that "The [EIA] numbers probably were overblown, but it was a simple method and had an essence of truth." Compared to other shale oil plays,

945-489: The Monterey formation is much thicker and more laterally extensive, but also much more geologically complex and deformed. See the linked photos from a field trip to Monterey outcrops at Vandenberg Air Force Base . "To say California geology is complex is an understatement. ... The Monterey play is no slam-dunk." In 2013, Bakken shale-oil pioneer Harold Hamm said the Monterey "might have a lot of potential, but there are reasons why it’s not being produced." J. David Hughes,

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990-507: The USC study's assumption that development of the Monterey shale could increase California oil production as much as seven-fold to be "unfounded," and the economic projections regarding jobs and tax revenue to be "extremely suspect." The Monterey Formation is considered the source of 84% of the oil in known fields of the San Joaquin Basin, a total of 12.2 billion barrels of oil. Of this, 112 million barrels of oil in known fields

1035-619: The United States's total estimated technically recoverable shale oil ( tight oil contained in shale , as distinct from oil shale ) resource, about 15.4 billion barrels (2.45 × 10 ^  m ). In 2012, the EIA revised its recoverable volume downward, to 13.7 billion barrels (2.18 × 10 ^  m ). As of 2013 advances in hydraulic fracturing commonly called "fracking," and the high price of oil resulted in spirited bidding by oil companies for leases. Occidental Petroleum and Venoco were reported to have been major players. The deposit lies 6,000 and 15,000 feet (1,800 and 4,600 m) below

1080-414: The area, with mixed luck: Shell Oil drilled a well all the way to 9,700 feet (3,000 m), but both oil and gas failed to produce, though they showed in drill cuttings; Fullerton Oil drilled seven separate holes, one of which blew out ten million cubic feet of gas per day, but then stuck shut, and had to be abandoned. In 1935, Standard Oil Company of California finally was able to complete a gas well which

1125-433: The field is predominantly agricultural, with oil and gas production, storage, and transportation infrastructure interspersed with orchards and row crops. Little native vegetation remains as all the land has been converted to agricultural use. Roads cross the region at right angles, following township, range, and section lines , as do irrigation canals. The Semitropic field resembles the other three natural gas reservoirs in

1170-413: The field was 70,000 bbd/d as of 2014. Wastewater from the field was once allowed to drain directly into the streams dissecting the region, and thence into the Kern River. This practice ended in the 1960s and 1970s when more stringent environmental regulations were enacted both on federal and state levels. Wastewater now is treated in facilities specifically built for this purpose, and after the treatment,

1215-515: The fields are more deeply buried and harder to find, as they have no surface geological expression, such as a line of hills indicating an anticlinal structure hiding an oil reservoir. Like many of the fields on the west side of the valley, it is an elongate dome aligned from northwest to southeast. The field is about seven miles (11 km) long by two across, at the widest point, and has a productive area of 4,430 acres (17.9 km). The field parallels Interstate 5 about five miles (8 km) to

1260-460: The formation's sediments appear to represent siliceous shales deposited at the edge of the continental shelf or in abyssal plains in the lower to middle bathyal zone . These deep-sea sediments were brought to the surface via tectonic activity. A similar depositional environment and geologic history is known for the adjacent, contemporaneous Modelo Formation , which preserves a similar paleobiota. The Monterey formation has long been recognized as

1305-816: The general vicinity to give early prospectors the idea that a petroleum reservoir might be nearby. Underneath several hundred feet of Holocene -age alluvium , deposited by thousands of years of runoff from the mountains that ring the Central Valley, is the Pleistocene Tulare Formation , which forms an impermeable cap to the underlying San Joaquin Clay, the principal gas-bearing unit. This unit varies in thickness from 2,200 to 4,400 feet (1,300 m), and has an average porosity of 28%. Drillers of early boreholes had determined that deeper formations contained oil, but since it never flowed, those prospectors guessed that

1350-477: The north, Horace and Milton McWhorter drilled this region's first commercial well." The current operator of the Kern River Field is Chevron , who has gradually acquired the field through buyout and merger with the various other operators, including Tidewater , one of the original developers of the enhanced production technologies that revived the field in the 1960s; Getty Oil ; and Texaco . While most of

1395-569: The northeast. California State Route 46, the Paso Robles Highway, cuts across the northern extremity of the field from east to west, about 12 miles (19 km) east of Lost Hills . The town of Wasco is about eight miles (13 km) farther east along the same route. Several small abandoned oil and gas fields adjoin the Semitropic field from the southeast to the southwest, and the small Wasco Oil Field (with only three wells remaining active)

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1440-526: The oil has been removed from the field, enhanced production technologies such as steam flooding have made it possible to extract much of the oil once considered unfeasible to recover. A high price of oil also makes recovery of previously marginal pools attractive. Total estimated reserves of the Kern River field at the end of 2006 totaled more than 475 million barrels (75,500,000 m ), which represented approximately 15% of California's 3.2-billion-barrels (510,000,000 m ) reserve. Annual oil production from

1485-647: The other Kern County oil fields which contain numerous pools, the Kern River field has one large pool, named for the field itself (the Kern River) and two smaller pools, the Vedder and Jewett, discovered in 1981 and 1985 respectively. The formation containing the Kern River pool is of Pliocene - Pleistocene age, and lies 400 to 1,300 feet (120 to 400 m) below ground surface; the Vedder and Jewett are of Oligocene and Miocene ages, respectively, with depths of 4,700 and 4,220 feet (1,430 and 1,290 m). The deepest well in

1530-586: The permeability of the units was insufficient for the field ever to be commercially viable. Wells drilled in 1956 and subsequent years, however, proved this wrong. Underneath the San Joaquin Clay is the Etchegoin Formation , which contains the Randolph Pool, a unit which turned out to be moderately productive. Its average depth is 7,400 feet (2,300 m) and the oil-bearing, highly porous subunit has

1575-426: The previous year. The bill, which Governor Jerry Brown promised to sign, provided for disclosure of chemical used, pre-testing of nearby water wells, and a study on environmental and safety issues to be completed by January 2015. Given the very limited success with fracking the Monterey to date, some find the controversy "much ado about little." In Santa Barbara County , Santa Maria Energy LLC (SME) has proposed

1620-621: The primary source of the oil produced from other formations in Southern California; the Monterey itself has been very productive where it is naturally fractured. Since 2011, the possibility that hydraulic fracturing might make the Monterey Shale productive over large areas has gained widespread public attention. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) in 2011, the 1,750-square-mile (4,500 km ) Monterey Shale Formation contained more than half of

1665-604: The results were said to be improvements over vertical wells. Carbon dioxide injection has been tested in the Monterey shale, with mixed results. "The main problem was that the carbon dioxide didn't increase production as much as hoped. ... That could be because the rock formation is so jumbled up, it's hard to find the right spot in which to inject the carbon dioxide." Oil companies such as Occidental Petroleum are using acidizing to stimulate production in Monterey wells, and other companies are experimenting with proprietary mixes of hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acids . "There's

1710-408: The second highest in the state. The principal operator on the field is Chevron Corporation The Kern River Oil Field covers an area of 10,750 acres (43.5 km ) in a rough oval extending over the low hills north-northeast of Bakersfield, hills which are now almost completely barren except for oil rigs, drilling pads and associated equipment. This area is the densest operational oil development in

1755-466: The seismically active region. The California legislature passed a bill regulating fracking in September 2013. Some environmentalists criticised the bill as being too lax. Some environmentalists promised not to rest until fracking is banned completely. Oil industry representatives criticized the bill as too restrictive. The measure was supported by state Sen. Fran Pavley, author of a fracking bill defeated

1800-527: The southern San Joaquin Valley – the Buttonwillow, Trico, and Paloma gas fields – in being a northwest-to-southeast trending ellipsoidal dome , with the topmost unit containing commercial quantities of gas within a geologic formation known as the San Joaquin Clay . None of this geologic structure is visible on the ground surface since the Central Valley is wide and flat, but enough wells had been drilled in

1845-463: The state of California: Midway-Sunset, which has more wells, is almost three times as large in surface area, for a lower overall density. Elevations on the Kern River Oil Field range from approximately 400 to 1,000 feet (120 to 300 m), rising towards the northeast, and the Kern River flows south of the field, from east to west, from the Sierra Nevada into the city of Bakersfield. The oil field

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1890-517: The surface. A widely cited March 2013 study released by the University of Southern California (USC) estimated that if extensive resource play development of the Monterey through hydraulic fracturing were successful, it could generate as many as 2.8 million jobs and as much as $ 24.6 billion in state and local taxes. However, observers have pointed out that as of 2012, however large its theoretical potential, no one as yet has succeeded in making

1935-400: The winter months, and averages 5 to 6 inches (150 mm). Freezes occur occasionally during the winter, and the winter months are also subject to frequent dense tule fogs , limiting visibility to near zero. Drainage from the field in generally into the irrigation canal system, but because of the flat surface gradient most rainfall soaks directly into the ground. Land use in the vicinity of

1980-467: Was self-sustaining at 3,193 feet, and was therefore considered the discovery well for the field. Peak gas production for the field was in 1942, and peak oil was in 1981. The field changed ownership several times in its history. Recent operators have included Pacific Energy Resources and Occidental Petroleum. Pacific Energy sold the field – which amounted to 75 wells – in October 2008 to Vintage Production,

2025-462: Was the deepest oil-producing unit ever exploited in California. Oil from this depth was light, with an API gravity of 42, and came up with a temperature of 300 °F (149 °C), along with a reservoir pressure of 8,200 psi. Richfield Oil Company, ancestor of ARCO and then part of BP , drilled the first well into the field in 1929, but the well was poorly placed and failed to find a commercially viable gas or oil zone. Several other firms tried

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