Southern California is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area as well as the Inland Empire. The region generally contains ten of California's 58 counties: Imperial, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura counties.
Kern County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 909,235. Its county seat is Bakersfield.
Bakersfield is a city in and the county seat of Kern County, California, United States. The city covers about 151 sq mi (390 km2) near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, which is located in the Central Valley region.
The San Joaquin Valley is the southern half of California's Central Valley. Famed as a major breadbasket, the San Joaquin Valley is an important source of food, producing a significant part of California's agricultural output.
State Route 33 is a north–south state highway in the U.S. state of California. It runs north from U.S. Route 101 in Ventura through the Transverse Ranges and the western side of the San Joaquin Valley to Interstate 5 at a point east of Tracy. SR 33 replaced part of U.S. Route 399 in 1964 during the "great renumbering" of routes. In the unincorporated sections of Kern County it is known as the West Side Highway. In addition, the California Legislature designated the entire Kern County portion as the Petroleum Highway in 2004. The southernmost portion in Ventura is a freeway known as the Ojai Freeway, while it is known as the Maricopa Highway from Ojai to Maricopa.
The Temblor Range is a mountain range within the California Coast Ranges, at the southwestern extremity of the San Joaquin Valley in California in the United States. It runs in a northwest-southeasterly direction along the borders of Kern County and San Luis Obispo County. The name of the range is from Spanish temblor meaning "tremor", referring to earthquakes. The San Andreas Fault Zone runs parallel to the range at the base of its western slope, on the eastern side of the Carrizo Plain, while the Antelope Plain, location of the enormous Midway Sunset, South Belridge, and Cymric oil fields, lies to the northeast.
Lost Hills Airport, also known as Lost Hills-Kern County Airport, was a public airport located one mile (1.6 km) northeast of the central business district (CBD) of Lost Hills, in Kern County, California, United States. It was mostly used for general aviation. It was closed in March 2019.
The Midway-Sunset Oil Field is a large oil field in Kern County, San Joaquin Valley, California in the United States. It is the largest known oilfield in California and also the largest oil field in the country by total oil in place, though Alaska's Prudhoe Bay Oil Field and the East Texas Oil Field have larger total production values of over 13 billion barrels and 5.4 billion barrels respectively compared to Midway-Sunset which has produced nearly 4 billion barrels.
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 South Belridge Oil Field is a large oil field in northwestern Kern County, San Joaquin Valley, California, about forty miles west of Bakersfield. Discovered in 1911, and having a cumulative production of over 2,000 million barrels (320,000,000 m3) of oil equivalent at the end of 2023, it is the fourth-largest oil field in California, after the Midway-Sunset Oil Field, Kern River Oil Field, and Wilmington Oil Field, and is the sixth-most productive field in the United States. Its estimated remaining reserves, as of the end of 2008, were around 494 million barrels (78,500,000 m3) out of approximately 10.2 billion barrels of original oil in place, and it had 6,253 active wells. The principal operator on the field was Aera Energy LLC, a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil. Additionally, the field included the only onshore wells in California owned and operated by ExxonMobil.
The Elk Hills Oil Field is a large oil field in western Kern County, in the Elk Hills of the San Joaquin Valley, California in the United States, about 20 miles (32 km) west of Bakersfield. Discovered in 1911, and having a cumulative oil production of close to 1.5 billion barrels (240,000 dam3) and a cumulative barrel of oil equivalent production of 2.2 billion BOE at the end of 2023, it is the fifth-largest oil field in California, and the seventh-most productive field in the United States.
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 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 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.
Mericos "Max" Whittier (1867–1925) was a pioneer in the early California oil industry and was instrumental in the development of 3 of California's billion barrel oil fields: Kern River, Midway-Sunset, and South Belridge.
The Round Mountain Oil Field is a large oil and gas field in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, about 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bakersfield, California, United States. It is east of the giant Kern River Oil Field, one of the largest in the United States, and also close to the Mount Poso Oil Field and Kern Front Oil Field. With a cumulative total recovery of more than 110 million barrels (17,000,000 m3) of oil, it is the 48th largest oil field in California, but remains relatively productive with still about ten percent of its reserves remaining in the ground, according to the California Department of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR).
The Antelope Hills are a low mountain range in the Transverse Ranges, in western Kern County, California. In 1910 Arnold and Johnson from the United States Geological Survey proposed the name "Antelope Hills" for "the group of low hills [that] are a range for the few wild antelope left in this region."
The North Belridge Oil Field is a large oil field along California State Route 33 in the northwestern portion of Kern County, California, about 45 miles west of Bakersfield. It is contiguous with the larger South Belridge Oil Field to the southeast, in a region of highly productive and mature fields. Discovered in 1912, it has had a cumulative production of 136,553,000 barrels (21,710,200 m3) of oil, and retains 27,443,000 barrels (4,363,100 m3) in reserve, as of the end of 2006, making it the 40th largest oil field in the state.
Salt Spring, originally, Aguaje de la Brea, a spring in the Antelope Plain on the southeast end of Pyramid Hills, 0.6 miles south of Emigrant Hill and 1.5 miles north of Wagon Wheel Mountain in the Pyramid Hills of Kern County, California. Its location appears on a 1914 USGS Topographic map of Lost Hills. Salt Spring is located just east of the Pyramid Hills and the Devils Den Oil Field, 3 miles southwest of Devils Den, close by the south side of Kecks Road, 0.23 miles east of the California Aqueduct, enclosed by a fence.
Minter Army Airfield auxiliary fields were a number of airfields used during World War II to support the Minter Army Airfield near Shafter, California. Minter Army Airfield was also called Lerdo Field, after the nearby road. Minter Army Airfield also housed the Shafter Gap Filler Annex P-59A and Shafter Army Aviation Test Activity and opened in June 1941. An Army depot open on the base in October 1941, the Minter Sub-Depot, a division of the Sacramento Air Depot. Minter Army Airfield had 7,000 troops and civilians working at the base.
