top of page

Peak NIMBYism In California




In Memory of Inglewood Oil Field (1924-2030)


The governor of California, Alfred E. Neuman, or whatever his name is, last week condemed the great Inglewood Oil Field in Los Angles County and it is set to be executed by lethal injection of Class H cement sometime in 2030.


Inglewood Field was discovered in 1924 by Standard of California (Chevron). Not far from the La Brea Tar pits, bitumen seeps in the area along the base of the Baldwin Hills led to several shallow Pliocene tests that produced thick, gooey oil. Subsequent wells drilled along a north-south strike determined the field was an elongated anticline bifurcated by the well-known Newport-Inglewood Fault and several minor antithetic relief faults.


There are actually nine vertically stacked payzones in the Inglewood anticline, the shallower zones Pliocene age (1,000 ft.); the deeper pays Miocene, including the prolific Topanga Sand, at 9,000 feet discovered in 1970's.


Numerous other California operators jumped in the development frey of Inglewood and by 1925 the field was producing 115,000 BOPD.


By 2012 the field, then owned by Plains Exploration, had declined to a little south of 3 MM BO per year from 437 active wells, most of the structrure under water flood. Plains bravely proposed the frac'ing of 24 vertical wells in the Topanga interval in Inglewood Field in 2015 and the state and local governments shut that plan down in a matter of days, like somebody was proposing a nuclear reactor. Freeport accquired Plains' production in California, butted heads with regulators daily and fled the entire state several years later.

Inglewood Field was so busy at one time in the late 1920's companies would buy homes and tear them down to drill wells on the empty lots. When folks wouldn't leave, entire homes were moved and relocated.


In 1948 Basin Oil Company's tank farm in Inglewood caught fire from a lightning strike and spread across the street into a trailer park killing three people and destroying many trailer houses.


The very next year Basin Oil boilers providing steam to wells being drilled in Inglewood Field blew up sending 300 pound chucks of steel aross another street hitting homes and cars like the one of the right . Nobody was killed in this incident.


















Snake bit, three years later Basin Oil lost control of its No. 18 Potereo well located near the 14th hole at Inglewood Country Club. The well caught fire and sent folks into full blown panic. Several thousand people were evacuated from their homes and sent to motels.


Myron Kinley and a young Red Adair were called out from Houston. The well showered West Manchester Blvd. with water, mud and big rocks, the fire went out, and eventually Kinley was able to remove rig debris and the get the well capped, but not before a crane ran over Red's foot. This blowout upset the neighbors around Inglewood a great deal and they have been complaining about oil ever since. Basin Oil was later acquired by Socony.


In 1963 a large man-made dam broke in the Inglewood, Baldwin Hills area killing 5 people and wiping out thousands of homes and some of the Inglewood Oil field.



Total cummulative production from Inglewood thru 2022 was 419,000,000 barrels of oil making it the 2nd largest oil field in the Los Angeles Basin. It is believed to still be producing 7,500 BOPD. Annual decline in Inglewood appears to be less than 2% per year. Before it was found guilty of emitting greenhouse gases and the direct cause of environmental "racism," the California Department of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources estimated Inglewoods remaining PDP reserves to be a little north of 30 MM BO.

Non-Oil Related Air Quality, Los Angeles


The 405 is just a few miles west of Inglewood and it stinks way worse than Inglewood treatment facilites. And if you tried to walk from the City of Inglewood, or Culver City, to the LAX down near El Segundo, a few miles away, you'd not make it four blocks before you were car jacked, shot or knived to death...but oil wells are dangerous, for sure. You can get away with almost any crime imaginable in California, and not be punished, except producing oil and/or natural gas.




“Good riddance to a terrible neighbor. We just wish it were happening sooner,” said Gladys Delgadillo, senior organizer at the Center for Biological Diversity.

In the mean time, inactive wells in the field need to be P&A'd ASAP or face monetary fines high enough to buy a new Tesla. Oil and natural gas tax reveune in California is approximately $22 billion dollars per year.


All this "forced abandonment" reminds me a little of natonalization of Mexico's oil industry in 1938, when American companies got kicked out and lost everything. The enterprize value of Inglewood Field to its current operator, Sentinel Peak Resources, is in the neighborhood $550MM; I am sure local HOA's will properly compensate the operator and assist with the plugging.


This is a BIG victory for California, so they think, and everyone is elated to see Inglewood Field executed.


Next up... other oilfields in the Los Angeles Basin, in 2023 still producing 252,000 BOPD of valuable domestic oil. The USGS estimates 2.3 billion barrels of proven shallow, low gravity oil can be extracted from the Los Angeles Basin, but won't. Too ugly, too smelly and far too dangerous.


California, by the way, consumes 33.3 MM gallons of gasoline each day, second in the U.S. only to Texas with 80% more land mass. Less than 8% of California's 14,000,000 vehicles are electric. Electricity in California cost 33.7 cents per KWh in 2023, more than any other State in the nation except Hawaii. 43% of that electricity is generated from wind and solar sources.


Because there will be no memorial service for Inglewood Oil Field in 2030 when its put to rest, in lieu of flowers you may send money to The Sierra Club's Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign in, where else... San Francisco.









 

References

[3] Los Angeles Times

[4] Calisphere

[5] Los Angeles Public Library

[6] Daily Breeze

[7] The History of Oil Along the Newport-Inglewood Structural Zone - Los Angeles County, California

[9] The New Yorker Magazine

5 Comments


rpvacvik
7 days ago

Mike,


One wonders if the owners, including the mineral owners, are to be compensated for this taking. Basically they are condemning these minerals so the taxpayers should reimburse the owners at fair market rates. Now fair market in CA now may be $0 for obvious reasons but these are mafia tactics and should have to pass muster legally up to and including the SCOTUS.


I am sure that CA would lawfare/rope-a-dope the operator up to the deadline and levy fines ad infinitum. Along the way, in the face of uncertainty, the operator would likely minimize operating expenses which would loser production which could or would be used to minimize compensation by the state.


This stuff boils my blood. If th…


Like
Mike
Mike
7 days ago
Replying to

Robert, the "settlement" agreement between the State of California et.al, and Sentinel Peak, the operator, is published but I cannot access it, though I have tired. As this "nationalization" of California's oil industry, Inglewood just being the first example, is the first of its kind in the U.S., it raises very interesting legal questions.


Mexico, Venezuela, Equador, all of Middle Eastern Countries like the KSA, when they nationalized their soverign oil rights and ran Americans off, the minerals under the land being condemned and taken over by the government belonged to the government. Not so in this case, not at all. Indeed as you point out, many royalty owners will suffer.


Lets say, for instance, you have a 0.00500 revenue…


Edited
Like

Energy hunger does amazing things... those 2.3 billion barrels will not seat forever in the ground

Edited
Like

Oh, Don't worry, those fields will be reactivated--after Cali secedes from the USA and China either invades or buys off the legislature.

Like

glmaddoux
Sep 28

An excellent obituary!


Like
bottom of page