Mountain View Oil Field
Encyclopedia
The Mountain View Oil Field is a large, mature, but still-productive oil field in Kern County, California
Kern County, California
Spreading across the southern end of the California Central Valley, Kern County is the fifth-largest county by population in California. Its economy is heavily linked to agriculture and to petroleum extraction, and there is a strong aviation and space presence. Politically, it has generally...

, in the United States, in the extreme southern part of the San Joaquin Valley
San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley is the area of the Central Valley of California that lies south of the Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta in Stockton...

 southeast of Bakersfield
Bakersfield, California
Bakersfield is a city near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in Kern County, California. It is roughly equidistant between Fresno and Los Angeles, to the north and south respectively....

. It underlies the town of Arvin
Arvin, California
Arvin is a city in Kern County, in the United States. Arvin is located southeast of Bakersfield, at an elevation of 449 feet . As of the 2010 census, the population was 19,304, up from 12,956 at the 2000 census....

, as well as some smaller agricultural communities. The field is spread out across a large area, covering just under eight square miles, with wells and storage facilities widely dispersed throughout the area, scattered among working agricultural fields of broccoli and carrots as well as citrus orchards. Discovered in 1933, it has produced over 90 Moilbbl of oil in its lifetime, and although declining in production is one of the few inland California fields in which new oil is still being discovered. 239.

As of the beginning of 2009, the field had numerous operators, unlike some of the larger, monolithic fields such as the Kern River field
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...

 to the north, which is entirely owned by Chevron Corporation
Chevron Corporation
Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation headquartered in San Ramon, California, United States and active in more than 180 countries. It is engaged in every aspect of the oil, gas, and geothermal energy industries, including exploration and production; refining,...

. Only independent oil companies operate on the Mountain View Field. Of the 175 active wells on the field in 2009, the largest operator was Atlantic Oil Company, with 49 producing wells; the second largest was Sunray Petroleum, with 22. Overall there were 23 separate operators, one of the most of any field in California.

Environmental setting

Unlike the largest of the Kern County oil fields which occupy the arid hilly region ringing the Central Valley, the Mountain View field is one of several which entirely underlie the flat, richly agricultural valley bottomlands. It is long and relatively narrow, with the productive area of the field being almost fifteen miles (24 km) long from its northwest to southeast extents, and from one to three miles (5 km) across. It consists of discontiguous areas, many of which are small, isolated, and some of which are abandoned. Land use in the field is mainly agricultural, although the field also underlies the entire town of Arvin, as well as several small unincorporated communities. Oil wells are scattered throughout the region, never densely clustered; some are adjacent to homes in Arvin itself, and many are situated within clearings in the area's abundant orchards and fields of row crops.

Two state highways pass through the field: California State Route 184
California State Route 184
State Route 184 is a state route in Kern County, California, locally known as “Weedpatch Highway.” It is mainly a 2-lane conventional highway, expanding to four lanes in Bakersfield, and Lamont. It connects the local agricultural land south of Bakersfield, and east of SR 99/I-5, to a major...

, which runs south to north through the town of Lamont
Lamont, California
Lamont is a census-designated place in Kern County, California, United States. Lamont is located south-southeast of downtown Bakersfield, at an elevation of 404 feet...

, passing through the extreme northwestern portion of the productive region; and Route 223
California State Route 223
State Route 223 is a state route in Kern County, California, and is locally known as Bear Mountain Boulevard. It is a truck route, connecting the agricultural land south of Bakersfield and east of SR 99/I-5, and the city of Arvin, to three major transportation corridors without having to drive...

 (Bear Mountain Boulevard), which goes west to east through the town of Arvin and then into the Tehachapi Mountains
Tehachapi Mountains
The Tehachapi Mountains , regionally also called The Tehachapis, are a mountain range in the Transverse Ranges system of California in the Western United States...

. Paved roads run along the section lines throughout at one-mile (1.6 km) intervals.

Terrain in the vicinity of the oil field is almost table-flat, with elevations ranging from approximately 400 to 500 feet (152.4 m) above sea level throughout the productive region. The land rises with a slight gradient to the south and east, in the direction of the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains
Tehachapi Mountains
The Tehachapi Mountains , regionally also called The Tehachapis, are a mountain range in the Transverse Ranges system of California in the Western United States...

. Climate is typical of the southern San Joaquin Valley, and is arid. Temperatures in the summer routinely exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit on cloudless days. Rain falls mainly in the winter months, and averages 5 to 6 inches annually. Freezes occur occasionally during the winter, and the winter months are also subject to frequent dense tule fog
Tule fog
Tule fog is a thick ground fog that settles in the San Joaquin Valley and Sacramento Valley areas of California's Great Central Valley. Tule fog forms during the late fall and winter after the first significant rainfall. The official time frame for tule fog to form is from November 1 to March 31...

s, 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.

Air quality in the vicinity of the oil field, and in Kern County in general, is among the worst in the United States. In 2009 Kern County had the worst particulate pollution in the U.S., and was second-worst for ozone
Ozone
Ozone , or trioxygen, is a triatomic molecule, consisting of three oxygen atoms. It is an allotrope of oxygen that is much less stable than the diatomic allotrope...

, after Los Angeles.

Geology

The Mountain View field is within the Southeast Stable Shelf, the southeastern extremity of the San Joaquin Basin Province, a region that contains numerous individual oil fields, including one of the largest in the United States – the Kern River Oil Field
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...

. Unlike many of the fields in the surrounding foothills and uplands, the geology of the Mountain View field gives no surface expression at all, since the deep surface alluvium
Alluvium
Alluvium is loose, unconsolidated soil or sediments, eroded, deposited, and reshaped by water in some form in a non-marine setting. Alluvium is typically made up of a variety of materials, including fine particles of silt and clay and larger particles of sand and gravel...

 buries all trace of the underlying structures trapping petroleum. Discovery came by wildcat-well prospecting. Since fields to the north, including Kern River, Kern Front
Kern Front Oil Field
The Kern Front Oil Field is a large oil and gas field in the lower Sierra Nevada foothills in Kern County, California. Discovered in 1912, and with a cumulative production of around of oil, it ranks 29th in size in the state, and is believed to retain approximately ten percent of its original oil...

, and Edison
Edison Oil Field
The Edison Oil Field is a large oil field in Kern County, California, in the United States, in the southeastern part of the San Joaquin Valley and adjacent foothills east-southeast of Bakersfield...

, were already producing, it was a reasonable inference that their oil-bearing strata extended to the south, out of sight underneath the alluvium.

The overall structure of the field is a faulted homocline
Homocline
In structural geology, a uniclinal structure, homoclinal structure, unicline or homocline is a sedimentary rock unit, which may also be associated with a stratigraphic landform, where the underlying strata are tilted in the same direction, especially with near uniform dip angle...

, with all the sedimentary units dipping in the same direction with little folding
Fold (geology)
The term fold is used in geology when one or a stack of originally flat and planar surfaces, such as sedimentary strata, are bent or curved as a result of permanent deformation. Synsedimentary folds are those due to slumping of sedimentary material before it is lithified. Folds in rocks vary in...

. The formations have a general strike towards the northwest, and dip to the southwest about 1200 feet (365.8 m) for each mile. Updip migration of petroleum is blocked by impermeable units placed there by vertical fault offsets, with the faults being numerous, and the largest roughly following the strike of the beds.

Numerous oil-producing formations have been identified within the Mountain View field, ranging in age from the basement Jurassic schist
Schist
The schists constitute a group of medium-grade metamorphic rocks, chiefly notable for the preponderance of lamellar minerals such as micas, chlorite, talc, hornblende, graphite, and others. Quartz often occurs in drawn-out grains to such an extent that a particular form called quartz schist is...

, which itself contains some oil pools, all the way to Pliocene-Pleistocene at the top of the stratigraphic column. Viewed from above, the field is broken out into five discontiguous areas: the large Main Area, the Arvin and West Arvin areas near the town of that name, the abandoned Di Giorgio Area, and the Vaccaro Area in the extreme south-southeast.

History, production, and operations

Numerous attempts were made to find the field, which was long suspected to exist. The first well in the area was drilled in 1924, and produced a small amount of oil, failing after four days. In the following years several more wells were drilled, including some by Shell Oil and Mohawk Petroleum Company, but all failed until Hogan Petroleum hit the rich Wharton pool in the Santa Margarita Formation at about 5500 feet (1,676.4 m) below ground surface in May 1933. This well initially produced 3200 oilbbl/d with a pressure of approximately 2,500 psi—a strong finding that brought other drillers to the area in short order.

Subsequent wells expanding outwards from the discovery well delineated the limits of the main productive area by the late 1930s. In 1936, Mohawk Petroleum discovered the DiGiorgio Area by hitting oil in the Santa Margarita Formation. The West Arvin area was discovered in 1937, with a well drilled into the Cattani pool of the Chanac Formation. Also in 1937, General Petroleum Corp. of California discovered the Vaccaro Area. Each of these areas yielded subsequent discoveries in other deeper pools throughout the 1940s and 1950s. In 1986, a new discovery was made in the Kern River Formation in the Arvin Area, and smaller pools continue to be found in the widely dispersed oil field – for example, in 2006 Vaquero Energy, one of the field's current operators, found a new pool in the once-abandoned DiGiorgio area in the underlying schist basement rock.

As of the beginning of 2009, 175 wells remained active on the field, distributed between five discontiguous areas. Field-wide, the average production per well is 2.5 barrel (0.3974682375 m³) of oil per day, with an 81 percent water cut (approximately four barrels of water come out of the reservoir for every barrel of oil). The Main Area remains the most productive, followed by the West Arvin and Arvin areas; many of the wells in these areas are slant-drilled to reach formations directly under the town.
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