Kern Front Oil Field

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The Kern Front Oil Field in Kern County, California. Other oil fields are shown in gray. KernFrontOilField.jpg
The Kern Front Oil Field in Kern County, California. Other oil fields are shown in gray.

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 210 million barrels (33,000,000 m3) of oil, it ranks 29th in size in the state, and is believed to retain approximately ten percent of its original oil (approximately 22 million barrels (3,500,000 m3)), according to the official estimates of the California Department of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR). [1] It is adjacent to the much larger Kern River Oil Field, which is to the southeast, and the Mount Poso Oil Field to the north.

Petroleum reservoir

A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface pool of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Petroleum reservoirs are broadly classified as conventional and unconventional reservoirs. In case of conventional reservoirs, the naturally occurring hydrocarbons, such as crude oil or natural gas, are trapped by overlying rock formations with lower permeability. While in unconventional reservoirs the rocks have high porosity and low permeability which keeps the hydrocarbons trapped in place, therefore not requiring a cap rock. Reservoirs are found using hydrocarbon exploration methods.

Kern County, California County in California, United States

Kern County is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 839,631. Its county seat is Bakersfield.

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 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

Contents

Setting

Oil wells and disturbed area on the Kern Front Field KernFrontWells1.jpg
Oil wells and disturbed area on the Kern Front Field

The Kern Front Field is approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) due north of the city of Oildale, and 10 miles (16 km) north of Bakersfield, in the first gentle rise of the hills above the floor of the San Joaquin Valley. It is about 6 miles (9.7 km) long by 2.5 miles (4.0 km), with the long axis being in the north-south direction, comprising a productive surface area of 5,495 acres (22.24 km2). Elevations vary from approximately 500 to 1,000 feet (150 to 300 m) above sea level. The field is spread out, especially compared to the exceedingly dense development in the adjacent Kern River Oil Field, which has one of the densest oil developments in the United States, with over 9,000 oil wells clustered in just several square miles. The Kern Front Field is bounded on the west by California State Route 65, on the southwest by James Road, and on the southeast by Bakersfield-Glennville Road. Oilfields Road runs south to north through the field.

Oildale, California census-designated place in California, United States

Oildale is a census-designated place (CDP) in Kern County, California, United States. Oildale is located 3.5 miles (5.6 km) north-northwest of downtown Bakersfield, at an elevation of 469 feet (143 m). The population was 32,684 at the 2010 census, up from 27,885 at the 2000 census. It is an unincorporated suburban town just north of Bakersfield across the Kern River, west of the Kern River Oil Field, and east of Highway 99.

Bakersfield, California City in California, United States of America

Bakersfield is a city in and the county seat of Kern County, California, United States. It covers about 151 sq mi (390 km2) near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's population is around 380,000, making it the 9th-most populous city in California and the 52nd-most populous city in the nation. The Bakersfield–Delano Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Kern County, had a 2010 census population of 839,631, making it the 62nd-largest metropolitan area in the United States. The more built-up urban area that includes Bakersfield and areas immediately around the city, such as East Bakersfield, Oildale, and Rosedale, has a population of over 520,000. Bakersfield is a charter city.

San Joaquin Valley Valley in California

The San Joaquin Valley is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven counties of Northern and one of Southern California, including, in the north, all of San Joaquin and Kings counties, most of Stanislaus, Merced, and Fresno counties, and parts of Madera and Tulare counties, along with a majority of Kern County, in Southern California. Although a majority of the valley is rural, it does contain cities such as Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton, Modesto, Turlock, Tulare, Porterville, Visalia, Merced, and Hanford.

Being within the ecological subsection of the California Central Valley known as the Hardpan Terraces, at an elevation of less than 1,000 feet (300 m), the predominant native vegetation is needlegrass. The climate is hot and arid, with summertime temperatures routinely exceeding 100 °F (38 °C); the mean freeze-free period runs from about 250 to 300 days. Mean annual precipitation is around 10 inches (250 mm), almost all as rain and almost all in the winter; summers are characteristically rainless. [2]

The term needlegrass may refer to any of several genera of grasses, including:

Geology

Kern Front Oil Field Structure Map KernFrontOilFieldStructureMap.png
Kern Front Oil Field Structure Map

The Kern Front Field contains two major producing units, the Etchegoin Formation and the Chanac, both sedimentary, but unconformably overlain. The Etchegoin is a Pliocene marine sand, and the Chanac is a Pliocene non-marine sand. Each is interbedded with silts and clays, and the sands have a high porosity, ranging from 25-33 percent, making them singularly suitable as petroleum reservoirs. Overlying the Etchegoin and Chanac formations is the Pleistocene Kern River Formation, which is highly productive in the adjacent Kern River Oil Field. These units all have a northwest strike and a small southwest dip. A large north-trending fault on the east side of the field provides a structural seal on that side; on the northeast, the up-dip side of the field, the sands grade into relatively impermeable silts and clays, providing a seal in that direction. Many small southwest-trending faults run across the field. The California DOGGR recognizes only one producing pool – the Etchegoin-Chanac – and commingles the production data. [3] [4]

The Etchegoin Formation is a Pliocene epoch geologic formation in the lower half of the San Joaquin Valley in central California.

The Chanac Formation is a Cenozoic Era sandstone geologic formation in the southeastern San Joaquin Valley, within Kern County, California.

The Pliocene Epoch is the epoch in the geologic timescale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58 million years BP. It is the second and youngest epoch of the Neogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Pliocene follows the Miocene Epoch and is followed by the Pleistocene Epoch. Prior to the 2009 revision of the geologic time scale, which placed the four most recent major glaciations entirely within the Pleistocene, the Pliocene also included the Gelasian stage, which lasted from 2.588 to 1.806 million years ago, and is now included in the Pleistocene.

Many sedimentary units underlie these petroleum-bearing sands, but they either have not produced much oil or have not been completely explored. Basement rocks – the granitic complex representing the huge Sierra Nevada batholith, and probably of late Jurassic age – occur at a depth of approximately 7,000 feet (2,100 m). The deepest well on the Kern Front Field, the Atlantic Richfield Company "Kramer No. 1", reached a depth of 7,738 feet (2,359 m) before bumping into the basement complex. [5]

The Jurassic period was a geologic period and system that spanned 56 million years from the end of the Triassic Period 201.3 million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period 145 Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era, also known as the Age of Reptiles. The start of the period was marked by the major Triassic–Jurassic extinction event. Two other extinction events occurred during the period: the Pliensbachian-Toarcian extinction in the Early Jurassic, and the Tithonian event at the end; however, neither event ranks among the "Big Five" mass extinctions.

ARCO oil company part of British Petroleum.

Atlantic Richfield Company is an American oil company with operations in the United States, Indonesia, the North Sea, the South China Sea, and Mexico. It has more than 1,300 gas stations in the western part of the United States, and recently five gas stations at northwestern Mexico. ARCO was formed by the merger of East Coast–based Atlantic Refining and California-based Richfield Oil Corporation in 1966. A merger in 1969 brought in Sinclair Oil Corporation. It became a subsidiary of UK-based BP plc in 2000 through its BP West Coast Products LLC (BPWCP) affiliate. On August 13, 2012, it was announced that Tesoro would purchase ARCO and its refinery for $2.5 billion. However, the deal came under fire due to increasing fuel prices. Many activists urged state and federal regulators to block the sale due to concerns that it would reduce competition and could lead to higher fuel prices at ARCO stations. On June 3, 2013, BP sold ARCO and the Carson Refinery to Tesoro for $2.5 billion. BP sold its Southern California terminals to Tesoro Logistics LP, including the Carson Storage Facility. BP will continue to own the ampm brand and sell it to Tesoro for Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada. BP exclusively licensed the ARCO rights from Tesoro for Northern California, Oregon, and Washington.

Oil from the field is heavy crude, with an API gravity averaging 14, and a sulfur content of 0.9 percent by weight. Since this oil is heavy, it is viscous and flows easily only when assisted by steam injection or other enhanced recovery techniques.

The American Petroleum Institute gravity, or API gravity, is a measure of how heavy or light a petroleum liquid is compared to water: if its API gravity is greater than 10, it is lighter and floats on water; if less than 10, it is heavier and sinks.

The average depth of the oil bearing units is about 2,300 feet (700 m), and the thickness of the oil-bearing strata ranges from 100 to 700 feet (30 to 213 m). Since the depth of the oil is relatively shallow, the temperature is relatively low, at only 100 °F (38 °C) (many of the deeper zones in Central Valley oil fields produce oil over 200 °F (93 °C), a greater safety hazard to workers). In 1983, the date of DOGGR's data compilation, the water table in the field was at 2,500 feet (760 m) below ground surface. [6]

History, production, and operations

Standard Oil Company of California discovered the field in 1912 with the drilling of their Well No. 1, into the Etchegoin pool, to a depth of 2,836 feet (864 m). The well still exists, as Chevron Corp. Well No. 1. Peak production for the field was in 1929, during which 4,535,029 barrels (721,012.0 m3) of oil were pumped from the ground. [7]

Production steadily declined from that peak until the invention of the steam injection method in the 1960s. Cyclic steam injection (the "huff and puff method" began in 1964, and production again rose, as the heavy oil flowed more freely to pumping wells. In 1978, former operator Chevron Corp. began steam flooding in the southern portion of the field, and Century Oil Management did the same in the northern portion. Petro-Lewis Corporation tested steam foam solution and a steam foam encapsulated in a polymer gel to see if steamflood performance could be improved. [8]

Gas production on the field peaked in 1980. [9]

One of the current operators, Tearlach Resources, has claimed that the field may actually contain a potential reserve of 500 million barrels (79,000,000 m3). This estimate is based on work done by the operators of the field in 1990, Mobil, ARCO and Occidental, and involves both recovering previously uneconomic deposits, as well as exploring deeper, previously unexplored zones, which some of the geologists believed may be petroleum-bearing. [10]

As of the beginning of 2009, there were 838 producing oil wells on the field. [11] If some of the current proposals for further exploration and development are enacted, such as those by Tearlach, this number could increase considerably.

Current operators include Bellaire, Vintage, E&B Natural Resource Management, West American Energy Corp., and a few others. [12] The field operators deliver some wastewater from oil production to Valley Waste Disposal, with some wastewater being filtered and softened to make feedwater for steam boilers. [13] Valley Waste skims residual oil and grease from the water, and the water is conveyed to Cawelo Water District, where it is re-used for irrigation. [14]

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McKittrick Oil Field

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Semitropic Oil Field

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Guijarral Hills Oil Field

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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. The field has a total productive area of over 8,000 acres (32 km2), most of which is intermingled with agricultural land uses; oil pumps and storage tanks are surrounded with row crops and orchards in much of the field's extent. Discovered in 1928, and with a cumulative production of 149 million barrels (23,700,000 m3) of oil as of 2008, and having over 6 million barrels (950,000 m3) in reserve, it is ranked 38th among California's oil fields by total ultimate recovery. It is a mature field in decline, and is run entirely by small independent operators. As of 2008, there were 40 different oil companies active on the field, one of the most in the state for a single field. 914 wells remained active on the field, averaging only two barrels of oil per well per day from the dwindling reservoirs.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ California Department of Conservation, Oil and Gas Statistics, Annual Report, December 31, 2006, p. 67
  2. ↑ "Hardpan Terraces subregion description". U.S. Forest Service. Archived from the original on 2007-08-13. Retrieved 2014-02-22.
  3. ↑ DOGGR, p. 230-231
  4. ↑ Bellaire oil: Kern Front Geology
  5. ↑ DOGGR, p. 230
  6. ↑ DOGGR, p. 231
  7. ↑ DOGGR, p. 231
  8. ↑ NORTH KERN FRONT FIELD STEAM DRIVE WITH ANCILLARY MATERIALS, by Eson, Rodney L., Fitch, Jon P., Chemical Oil Recovery Company; Shannon, Albert M., Petro-Lewis Corporation. In SPE/DOE Enhanced Oil Recovery Symposium, 5-8 April 1981, Tulsa, Oklahoma
  9. ↑ DOGGR, p. 231
  10. ↑ News release, 20 April 2007
  11. ↑ "2008 Report of the state oil & gas supervisor" (PDF). Department of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources. California Department of Conservation ("DOGGR 2009"). 2009. Retrieved January 22, 2010. p. 63
  12. ↑ California DOGGR database query page
  13. ↑ Bellaire
  14. ↑ Public Notice Concerning Intent to Issue a Time Schedule Order, California Regional Water Quality Control Board, Central Valley Region.

Coordinates: 35°29′04″N119°02′25″W / 35.4844°N 119.0403°W / 35.4844; -119.0403

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