Spindletop is an oil field located in the southern portion of Beaumont, Texas, in the United States. The Spindletop dome was derived from the Louann Salt evaporite layer of the Jurassic geologic period. On January 10, 1901, a well at Spindletop struck oil. The Spindletop gusher blew for 9 days at a rate estimated at 100,000 barrels (16,000 m3) of oil per day. Gulf Oil and Texaco, now part of Chevron Corporation, were formed to develop production at Spindletop. The Spindletop discovery led the United States into the oil age. Prior to Spindletop, oil was primarily used for lighting and as a lubricant. Because of the quantity of oil discovered, burning petroleum as a fuel for mass consumption suddenly became economically feasible.
Signal Hill is a city 2.2 sq mi (5.7 km2) in area in Los Angeles County, California. Located high on a hill, the city is an enclave completely surrounded by the city of Long Beach. Signal Hill was incorporated on April 22, 1924, roughly three years after oil was discovered there. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 11,016.
A blowout is the uncontrolled release of crude oil and/or natural gas from an oil well or gas well after pressure control systems have failed. Modern wells have blowout preventers intended to prevent such an occurrence. An accidental spark during a blowout can lead to a catastrophic oil or gas fire.
The Lakeview Gusher was an eruption of hydrocarbons from a pressurized oil well in the Midway-Sunset Oil Field in Kern County, California, in 1910. It created the largest accidental oil spill in history, lasting 18 months and releasing an estimated 9 million barrels of crude oil.
Mentryville was an oil drilling town in the Santa Susana Mountains in Los Angeles County, California, USA. It was started by Charles Alexander Mentry in the 1870s around the newly discovered oil reserves in that area. The first oil strike was on September 26, 1876. The town is located at the terminus of Pico Canyon Road, four miles west of the Lyons Avenue exit from I-5 in Santa Clarita. It is currently a part of Stevenson Ranch.
Well No. 4, Pico Canyon Oilfield, located about seven miles (11 km) west of Newhall, California, in the Santa Susana Mountains, was the first commercially successful oil well in the Western United States and is considered the birthplace of California's oil industry. Drilled in 1876, it turned nearby Newhall into a boomtown and also spawned a smaller boomtown called Mentryville adjacent to the drilling site. Well No. 4 continued in operation for 114 years until it was capped in 1990. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966, and the Mentryville ghost town is now open to the public as a historic park.
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 a cumulative production of close to 2 billion barrels (320,000,000 m3) 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 m3), the second largest in the state. It had 9,183 active wells, the second highest in the state. The principal operator on the field is Chevron Corporation
The Buena Vista Oil Field, formerly the Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 2 (NPR-2) is a large oil field in Kern County, San Joaquin Valley, California in the United States. Discovered in 1909, and having a cumulative production of approximately 667 million barrels (106,000,000 m3), it is the tenth-largest oil field in California. As of year end 2006 the field had a total reserve of only about one percent of its original oil, and having produced a mere 713,000 barrels (113,400 m3). Since, the field has gone through a revitalization. Crimson Resources initiated a waterflood in the Etchegoin Formation, saw good response and sold the asset to Occidental Petroleum. CRC continued the development of the waterflood, but also tested the viability of the Monterey Formation. The Monterey Formation at Buena Vista has proven to be a viable target and is currently being developed.
The Lost Hills Oil Field is a large oil field in the Lost Hills Range, north of the town of Lost Hills in western Kern County, California, in the United States.
The Beverly Hills Oil Field is a large and currently active oil field underneath part of the US cities of Beverly Hills, California, and portions of the adjacent city of Los Angeles. Discovered in 1900, and with a cumulative production of over 150 million barrels of oil, it ranks 39th by size among California's oil fields, and is unusual for being a large, continuously productive field in an entirely urban setting. All drilling, pumping, and processing operations for the 97 currently active wells are done from within four large "drilling islands", visible on Pico and Olympic boulevards as large windowless buildings, from which wells slant diagonally into different parts of the producing formations, directly underneath the multimillion-dollar residences and commercial structures of one of the wealthiest cities in the United States. Annual production from the field was 1.09 million barrels in 2006, 966,000 barrels in 2007, and 874,000 in 2008, and the field retains approximately 11 million barrels of oil in reserve, as estimated by the California Department of Conservation. The largest operators as of 2009 were independent oil companies Plains Exploration & Production and BreitBurn Energy.
The Long Beach Oil Field is a large oil field underneath the cities of Long Beach and Signal Hill, California, in the United States. Discovered in 1921, the field was enormously productive in the 1920s, with hundreds of oil derricks covering Signal Hill and adjacent parts of Long Beach; largely due to the huge output of this field, the Los Angeles Basin produced one-fifth of the nation's oil supply during the early 1920s. In 1923 alone the field produced over 68 million barrels of oil, and in barrels produced by surface area, the field was the world's richest. The field is eighth-largest by cumulative production in California, and although now largely depleted, still officially retains around 5 million barrels of recoverable oil out of its original 950 million. 294 wells remained in operation as of the beginning of 2008, and in 2008 the field reported production of over 1.5 million barrels of oil. The field is currently run entirely by small independent oil companies, with the largest operator in 2009 being Signal Hill Petroleum, Inc.
The South Mountain Oil Field is a large and productive oil field in Ventura County, California, in the United States, in and adjacent to the city of Santa Paula. Discovered in 1916, and having a cumulative production of over 158 million barrels (25,100,000 m3) of oil, it is the 37th largest oil field in California and the second largest in Ventura County. As of the beginning of 2009, it retains 316 active wells, and has an estimated 1.4 million barrels (220,000 m3) of oil remaining recoverable with current technology. Vintage Production, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, was the largest operator as of 2009.
The Los Angeles City Oil Field is a large oil field north of Downtown Los Angeles. Long and narrow, it extends from immediately south of Dodger Stadium west to Vermont Avenue, encompassing an area of about four miles long by a quarter-mile across. Its former productive area amounts to 780 acres (3.2 km2).
The story of oil production in California began in the late 19th century. In 1903, California became the leading oil-producing state in the US, and traded the number one position back-and forth with Oklahoma through the year 1930. As of 2022, California produced 3% of the crude oil of the nation, behind Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Alaska, Colorado, and Oklahoma. In the past century, California's oil industry grew to become the state's number one GDP export and one of the most profitable industries in the region. The history of oil in the state of California, however, dates back much earlier than the 19th century. For thousands of years prior to European settlement in America, Native Americans in the California territory excavated oil seeps. By the mid-19th century, American geologists discovered the vast oil reserves in California and began mass drilling in the Western Territory. While California's production of excavated oil increased significantly during the early 20th century, the accelerated drilling resulted in an overproduction of the commodity, and the federal government unsuccessfully made several attempts to regulate the oil market.
The Wheeler No. 1 Oil Well was the first well drilled in the Drumright-Cushing Oil Field of northeast Oklahoma, near Drumright. The success of the well, drilled in 1912 by Thomas Baker Slick, Sr., led to the development of the Cushing field and gave impetus to the early development of Oklahoma oilfields. The Drumright-Cushing field would go on to produce 310,000 barrels of oil a day at its peak in May 1917. The well made Slick's name as "King of the Wildcatters".
The California oil and gas industry has been a major economic and cultural component of the US state of California for over a century. Oil production was a minor factor in the 19th century, with kerosene replacing whale oil and lubricants becoming essential to the machine age. Oil became a major California industry in the 20th century with the discovery on new fields around Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley, and the dramatic increase in demand for gasoline to fuel automobiles and trucks. In 1900 California pumped 4 million barrels (640,000 m3), nearly 5% of the national supply. Then came a series of major discoveries, and the state pumped 100 million bbl (16 million m3) in 1914, or 38% of the national supply. In 2012 California produced 197 million bbl (31 million m3) of crude oil, out of the total 2,375 million bbl (378 million m3) of oil produced in the US, representing 8.3% of national production. California drilling operations and oil production are concentrated primarily in Kern County, San Joaquin Valley and the Los Angeles basin.
Seria oil field also known as Seria Field is the largest oil field in northwest Borneo, discovered in 1929. The oil is accumulated in Upper Miocene sandstone, trapped in Seria Anticline that straddles the present day coastline. This field has produced more than 1 billion barrels of oil for more than 75 years. Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) is the operator of this field.
The Inglewood Oil Field in Los Angeles County, California, is the 18th-largest oil field in the state and the second-most productive in the Los Angeles Basin. Discovered in 1924 and in continuous production ever since, in 2012 it produced approximately 2.8 million barrels of oil from some five hundred wells. Since 1924 it has produced almost 400 million barrels, and the California Department of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) has estimated that there are about 30 million barrels remaining in the field's one thousand acres, recoverable with present technology.
The Dominguez Oil Field is a large oil field underneath Dominguez Hills near Carson, California and the California State University, Dominguez Hills. It was a major oil producer from 1923 through 1960. Starting in 2010, oil companies became interested in redeveloping the field using modern extraction technologies.
The Pioneer Oil Refinery was the first successful oil refinery in California, built in 1876 off Pine Street in Newhall, Santa Clarita, California. The Pioneer Oil Refinery was designated a California Historic Landmark (No.172) on March 6, 1935. Pioneer Oil Refinery is the oldest existing refinery in the world. The Lang Southern Pacific Station railroad line served the refinery. In 2020, the refinery was added to the National Register of Historic Places; it is the only site on the National Register of Historic Places within the city of Santa Clarita.
