Round Mountain Oil Field
The Round Mountain oil field is an extensive oil and gas field in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada , about ten miles northeast of Bakersfield , California . It is east of the large Kern River oil field , which is among the largest in the United States , and is near the Mount Poso oil field . With a total output of more than 110 million barrels of crude oil, it ranks 48th in California, but it is still one of the most productive because, according to estimates by the California Department of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), ten percent of the deposits are not yet are promoted.
location
The oil field is located northeast of Bakersfield between Kern River and Poso Creek, in the lower foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The main access to the field is from the south, via Round Mountain Road, which also passes the more developed Kern River oil field. The surface elevation of the oil field ranges from about 200 m above sea level on Poso Creek to 492 m on Round Mountain itself. The topography is varied, and especially in the northern part of the field the landscape is intersected by several deep canyons .
The area belongs to an ecological subsection of California's long valley known as Hardpan Terraces . Most of the vegetation consists of feather grasses , with low scrub, especially on the north-facing slopes. The climate is dry and hot, and summer temperatures rise to 40 ° C; nevertheless the area records between 250 and 300 frost days annually. The annual amount of precipitation adds up to about 250 mm, with the majority falling in winter. Summers are usually free of precipitation, and the watercourses dry up in summer and early fall. The surface runoff of the water in the remaining months is rapid. The area drains via Poso Creek and Kern River to the south of the San Joaquin Valley .
The field itself is divided into five differently named areas, some of which contain several inactive sources. The main area is the largest and is formed by a basin about eight kilometers long and about a kilometer wide, which extends north-south from Poso Creek to the Kern River and includes Round Mountain. North of this is the Coffee Canyon Area and northeast the Pyramid Area . In the west are the two divided basins of the Sharktooth Area and the two in the Alma Area . The total productive area of the oil field, the area in which wells encounter significant amounts of oil and gas, is 2,630 acres, or approximately ten square kilometers.
geology
The crude oil in the Round Mountain oil field comes primarily from four basins whose names are Freeman-Jewett , Pyramid Hill , Vedder, and Walker after the top-to-bottom stratigraphic stratification (from young to old) . Each is within a formation of sediments with the same name. Freeman-Jewett and Pyramid Hill are from the Miocene , Vedder from the Oligocene and the Walker Formation at the bottom came from the Eocene and Oligocene. Of these, the Vedder formation was the most productive. More than 50 million barrels could be extracted here.
In the northeast , the field borders on a fault that acts as a siphon because it rises on the oil-bearing strata. The rock below the oil-bearing strata was formed in the Jura and, at around 1200 m, is not particularly deep for an oil field in Kern County. The deepest borehole is Alma No. 6 , which hit granite at a depth of 1347 m .
The oilfield's crude oil is generally relatively heavy, with API grades ranging from 13 in the Sharktooth and Alma areas to 22 in the Jewett deposit. By injecting water and repeatedly introducing steam, the heavier oil has also been partially degraded since the early 1960s.
History of the promotion activity
The first exploratory drilling was carried out in May 1927 by Getty Oil, now part of Chevron Corporation , in the Pyramid Hill Basin of the main field. In 1928 they started at Coffee Canyon, 1937 in the Pyramid Area, 1943 in the Sharktooth Area. Exploration of the Alma Area began in 1974.
The peak of funding was reached in 1938. That year 5,453,194 barrels of crude oil were pumped out of the earth. In 2008, neither Chevron nor any of the other major oil companies had their own units in the field. The current production is provided by several companies including Macpherson Oil Company, Coffee Petroleum, Pace Diversified Corporation and Arthur McAdams.
swell
- California Oil and Gas Fields, Volumes I, II and III . Vol. I (1998), Vol. II (1992), Vol. III (1982). California Department of Conservation, Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR). 1472 pages. PDF on CD available from www.consrv.ca.gov.
- California Department of Conservation, Oil and Gas Statistics, Annual Report, December 31, 2006.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Annual Report, December 31, 2006 , California Department of Conservation, Oil and Gas Statistics, 67
- ↑ Hardpan Terraces subregion description
- ↑ DOGGR, pages 374-376
- ↑ Chenot, David. Short Radius Lateral Drilling in the Vedder Sand: Round Mountain Oil Field, California: Final Report. US Office of Scientific and Technical Information (osti.gov), 2001.
- ↑ DOGGR, page 377
- ↑ DOGGR, pages 376-381
- ↑ DOGGR, pages 376–381
- ↑ DOGGR database query for the Round Mountain Field ( Memento from February 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive )