 The San Ardo Oil Field in Central California. Other oil fields are shown in gray. The San Ardo Oil Field is a large oil field in Monterey County, California, in the United States. It is in the upper Salinas Valley, about five miles (8 km) south of the small town of San Ardo, and about twenty miles (32 km) north of Paso Robles. With an estimated ultimate recovery of 530,000,000 barrels (84,000,000 m³) of oil, it is the 13th-largest oil field in California, and of the top twenty California oil fields in size, it is the most recent to be discovered (1947).[1] As of the end of 2006, the principal operators of the field were Chevron Corp. and Aera Energy LLC. Drilling rig in a small oil field Near Sarnia, Ontario, 2001 An oil field is an area with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum (oil) from below ground. ...
Monterey County is a county located on the Pacific coast of California, its northwestern section forming the southern half of Monterey Bay. ...
Salinas Valley, on River Road near Marina. ...
San Ardo is a census-designated place located in Monterey County, California. ...
Paso Robles (full name: El Paso de Robles) is a city in San Luis Obispo County, California, United States. ...
Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) is one of the worlds largest global energy companies. ...
Aera Energy LLC (Aera) is the California-based joint venture of Shell Oil Company and Mobil Oil. ...
Setting  View of the San Ardo Oil Field , with the Salinas River in the foreground. A familiar sight to travelers on U.S. Highway 101 between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the oil field is located about midway between Paso Robles and King City, in the southern part of Monterey County, at the Alvarado Road exit from U.S. 101. Most of the field is on the east bank of the Salinas River and in the adjacent hills of the Coast Ranges. Overall it is about five miles (8 km) long by two wide, and its productive area encompasses 4,390 acres (17.8 km²). Elevations on the oil field range from approximately 430 feet (130 m) at the Salinas River to around 1,100 feet (340 m) in the hills to the east; the densest area of operations is on the flat land in the river valley. U.S. Highway 101, or U.S. Route 101 (often just U.S. 101), is a north-south highway that is aligned along the Pacific West Coast of the United States. ...
King City is a city located in Monterey County, California. ...
The Salinas River is a major river of the central coast of California in the United States, approximately 150 mi (240 km) long. ...
Vegetation in the oil field area varies from riparian in the immediate vicinity of the Salinas River, to grassland, chaparral, and oak woodland in the hills and uplands, although much of the vegetation has been removed in the central area of active operations. Land immediately north of the oil field in the Salinas River Valley is agricultural, while other adjacent land, which is mostly hilly, is predominantly used for livestock grazing.
Geology The San Ardo Oil Field is the farthest north of the major oil fields west of the San Andreas Fault in California; most of the other large fields are east of the fault. As is common with California oil fields, the San Ardo Field is an anticlinal structure. The productive units are the Aurignac Sands, which are a portion of the huge Monterey Formation, a sedimentary rock unit which underlies much of coastal California. These sands are an average of about 700 feet (210 m) thick, contain an abundance of heavy crude oil, and overlie granodioritic basement rocks. Above the Aurignac sands are the thinner but also productive Lombardi sands, which can be found at about 1,800 feet (550 m) below ground surface. The granodioritic basement is generally around 2,500 feet (760 m) below ground surface.[2] View of the San Andreas Fault on the Carrizo Plain in central California, 35°07N, 119°39W The San Andreas Fault is a geological fault that runs a length of roughly 800 miles (1300 kilometres) through western and southern California in the United States. ...
Anticline with syncline visible at far right- USGS In structural geology, an anticline is a Fold (geology) that is convex to the youngest beds—youngest sediments are on back of hand, older under the palm. ...
A sample of granodiorite rock Granodiorite (IPA: ) is an intrusive igneous rock similar to granite, but contains more plagioclase than potassium feldspar. ...
Rock formations above the highest productive unit include the Paso Robles, Pancho Rita, and Santa Margarita Formations, of Pleistocene, Pliocene, and Miocene age, respectively. All of the productive units are of Miocene age, and the underlying basement rocks date to the Jurassic Era. The Los Lobos thrust fault complex demarcates the western boundary of the field.[3] The Pleistocene epoch (IPA: ) on the geologic timescale is the period from 1,808,000 to 11,550 years BP. The Pleistocene epoch had been intended to cover the worlds recent period of repeated glaciations. ...
The Pliocene epoch (spelled Pleiocene in some older texts) is the period in the geologic timescale that extends from 5. ...
The Miocene Epoch is a period of time that extends from about 23. ...
The Jurassic Period is a major unit of the geologic timescale that extends from about 199. ...
Production and operations  Aerial photograph of the San Ardo Oil Field (2005) showing the central area of operations. U.S. Highway 101 runs along the left. The Texas Company (later Texaco, and currently Chevron Corp.) discovered the field in November 1947 by drilling their "Lombardi 1" well to a depth of 2,158 feet (658 m). Initial production from the discovery well was 155 barrels per day (24.6 m³/d).[4]
Since the oil is heavy crude, with API gravity of only 9-11 in the Lombardi Sands and 13 in the Aurignac, getting it to flow to production wells can be difficult. Various enhanced recovery technologies developed during the 1960s and 1970s have made the process easier. Steam flooding is the technology of choice in the San Ardo Field; injection wells force steam into the ground to heat up the crude and decrease its viscosity, and if strategically placed, can push the oil to nearby production wells. Steam flooding has been used in both the Aurignac and Lombardi sands since 1966-1967; water flooding is also being used in the Aurignac. The peak production from the field was in 1967, the first year in which both productive units were subject to steam flooding.[5] The American Petroleum Institute gravity, or API gravity, is a measure of how heavy or light a petroleum liquid is compared to water. ...
For other uses, see Viscosity (disambiguation). ...
Currently, the principal operators on the field are Chevron Corp., Aera Energy LLC, and Plains Exploration and Production (PXP), which acquired former operator Nuevo Energy in 2004. As of the end of 2006 Chevron and Aera Energy were the two largest producers of oil in California. [6] Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) is one of the worlds largest global energy companies. ...
Aera Energy LLC (Aera) is the California-based joint venture of Shell Oil Company and Mobil Oil. ...
References - 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). 1,472 pp. San Ardo information pp. 448-451. PDF file available on CD from www.consrv.ca.gov.
- California Department of Conservation, Oil and Gas Statistics, Annual Report, December 31, 2006.
- Kempner, William C. The San Ardo Field 3-D Seismic Survey: Design, Acquisition, and Preliminary Result. ChevronTexaco, Bakersfield, CA. Available on the web at Searchanddiscovery.net.
Notes - ^ DOGGR 2006 Annual Report, p. 67
- ^ Kempner
- ^ DOGGR, p. 448
- ^ DOGGR, p. 449
- ^ DOGGR, p. 450
- ^ DOGGR 2006 Annual Report, p. 5
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