The Kern Front Oil Field is a large oil and gas field in the lower

Sierra Nevada foothills :''See Sierra Nevada for general information about the mountain range in the United States.'' The ecology of the Sierra Nevada, located in the U.S. states of California and Nevada, is diverse and complex: the plants and animals are a significan ...

Kern County, California 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. Kern County comprises the Bakersfield, California, Metropolitan statistical area. The county s ...

. Discovered in 1912, and with a cumulative production of around of oil, it ranks 29th in size in the state, and is believed to retain approximately ten percent of its original oil (approximately ), according to the official estimates of the California Department of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR). It is adjacent to the much larger

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 of oil by the end of 2006, it is ...

, which is to the southeast, and the

Mount Poso Oil Field The Mount Poso Oil Field is a large oil and gas field in the lower foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Kern County, California, United States. Discovered in 1926, it is the 21st largest field in California by total ultimate oil recovery, having a cu ...

to the north.

Setting

The Kern Front Field is approximately due north of the city of Oildale, and north of Bakersfield, in the first gentle rise of the hills above the floor of the

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) 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 ...

. It is about long by , with the long axis being in the north-south direction, comprising a productive surface area of . Elevations vary from approximately 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 State Route 65 (SR 65) is a north-south state highway in the U.S. state of California. It is composed of two segments in the Central Valley. The southern segment begins at SR 99, near Bakersfield and terminates at SR 198 near Exeter. It also ...

, on the southwest by James Road, and on the southeast by Bakersfield-Glennville Road. Oilfields Road runs south to north through the field. Being within the ecological subsection of the California Central Valley known as the Hardpan Terraces, at an elevation of less than , the predominant native vegetation is

needlegrass The term needlegrass may refer to any of several genera of grasses, including: *'' Achnatherum'' *''Aristida'' (three-awns) *'' Hesperostipa'' *''Nassella'' *''Stipa'' *''Triraphis'' See also * Spear grass (disambiguation) * Wiregrass (disambigua ...

. The climate is hot and arid, with summertime temperatures routinely exceeding ; the mean freeze-free period runs from about 250 to 300 days. Mean annual precipitation is around , almost all as rain and almost all in the winter; summers are characteristically rainless.

Geology

The Kern Front Field contains two major producing units, the

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

unconformably An unconformity is a buried erosional or non-depositional surface separating two rock masses or strata of different ages, indicating that sediment deposition was not continuous. In general, the older layer was exposed to erosion for an interval ...

overlain. The Etchegoin is a

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

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. 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 The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

age – occur at a depth of approximately . The deepest well on the Kern Front Field, the Atlantic Richfield Company "Kramer No. 1", reached a depth of before bumping into the basement complex. Oil from the field is heavy crude, with an

API gravity 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 ...

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 average depth of the oil bearing units is about , and the thickness of the oil-bearing strata ranges from . Since the depth of the oil is relatively shallow, the temperature is relatively low, at only (many of the deeper zones in Central Valley oil fields produce oil over , a greater safety hazard to workers). In 1983, the date of DOGGR's data compilation, the water table in the field was at below ground surface.

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 . The well still exists, as

Chevron Corp. Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation. The second-largest direct descendant of Standard Oil, and originally known as the Standard Oil Company of California (shortened to Socal or CalSo), it is headquartered in Sa ...

Well No. 1. Peak production for the field was in 1929, during which of oil were pumped from the ground. 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

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. Gas production on the field peaked in 1980. One of the current operators, Tearlach Resources, has claimed that the field may actually contain a potential reserve of . 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. As of the beginning of 2009, there were 838 producing oil wells on the field. p. 63 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. 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. 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. Public Notice Concerning Intent to Issue a Time Schedule Order, California Regional Water Quality Control Board, Central Valley Region.
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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. McKittrick Oil Field information pp. 268-272. PDF file available on CD from www.consrv.ca.gov. * ''California Department of Conservation, Oil and Gas Statistics, Annual Report, December 31, 2006.''

Notes

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