South Belridge Oil Field
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The South Belridge Oil Field is a large
oil field A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the presence ...
in northwestern
Kern County 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 sp ...
,
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 c ...
, California, about forty miles west of
Bakersfield Bakersfield is a city in Kern County, California, United States. It is the county seat and largest city of Kern County. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's populat ...
. Discovered in 1911, and having a cumulative production of over of oil at the end of 2008, it is the fourth-largest oil field in California, after the
Midway-Sunset Oil Field 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 the third largest in the United States. The field was discovered in 1894, ...
,
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 ...
, and
Wilmington Oil Field The Wilmington Oil Field is a prolific petroleum field in Los Angeles County in southern California in the United States. Discovered in 1932, it is the third largest oil field in the United States in terms of cumulative oil production. The field ...
, and is the sixth-most productive field in the United States. Its estimated remaining reserves, as of the end of 2008, were around , the second-largest in the state, and it had 6,253 active wells. p. 63. The principal operator on the field was
Aera Energy LLC Aera Energy LLC (or simply Aera) is a natural gas, oil exploration and production company started as a joint venture between Shell plc (through Shell USA) and Mobil (which later merged to form ExxonMobil). Headquartered in Bakersfield, Cal ...
, a joint venture between
Royal Dutch Shell Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yo ...
and
ExxonMobil ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...
. Additionally, the field included the only onshore wells in California owned and operated by ExxonMobil.


Setting

The oil field is located along State Route 33, between the junctions with State Route 58 on the south and State Route 46 on the north. The field is in an area of gentle slope to the southwest, just above the San Joaquin Valley which is adjacent on the east; the crest of the
Temblor Range 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 a ...
, the nearest part of the California Coast Ranges, parallels the oil field about ten miles to the southwest. The field is about long by wide, and encompasses a productive area of . Elevations on the oil field range from approximately ; the elevation of the floor of the San Joaquin Valley to the east is around . The South Belridge Oil Field is part of the larger Belridge Producing Complex of Aera Energy LLC, which includes also the smaller, but still substantial oil fields of North Belridge,
Lost Hills The Lost Hills are a low mountain range in the Transverse Ranges, near Lost Hills, California and Interstate 5 in western Kern County, California. They contain the Lost Hills Oil Field, the largest oil field in Kern County, and are located in t ...
, and Cymric, all in northwestern Kern County. Most native vegetation is gone from the oil field, with the most dense operational areas being almost completely barren except for pumping units, drilling pads, evaporation ponds, storage tanks, steam generators, and associated equipment. In spite of this seeming sterility, species such as the endangered
San Joaquin kit fox The endangered San Joaquin kit fox (''Vulpes macrotis mutica'') was formerly very common in the San Joaquin Valley and through much of Central California. Its 1990 population was estimated to be 7,000. This subspecies is still endangered, after n ...
(''vulpes macrotis mutica'') continue to use areas of oil field development as habitat.


Geology

The South Belridge Field is a southeast-plunging
anticline In structural geology, an anticline is a type of fold that is an arch-like shape and has its oldest beds at its core, whereas a syncline is the inverse of an anticline. A typical anticline is convex up in which the hinge or crest is the ...
, in which the oil has collected in pools in
structural trap In petroleum geology, a trap is a geological structure affecting the reservoir rock and caprock of a petroleum system allowing the accumulation of hydrocarbons in a reservoir. Traps can be of two types: stratigraphic or structural. Structural trap ...
s sealed by both above-lying impermeable units as well as tar seals. Most of the oil has pooled in the Tulare Formation, of
Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), 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 fina ...
age, and in the
Diatomite Diatomaceous earth (), diatomite (), or kieselgur/kieselguhr is a naturally occurring, soft, siliceous sedimentary rock that can be crumbled into a fine white to off-white powder. It has a particle size ranging from more than 3  μm to le ...
Formation, of
Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...
age. The oil itself probably originated in the underlying
Monterey Formation 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 islan ...
, migrating upward to structural and stratigraphic traps over time.


Extraction

A total of six oil pools have been found in the South Belridge: the Tulare, Etchegoin, Diatomite, Antelope Shale, McDonald, and Devilwater-Gould. Both the Tulare and Diatomite were discovered in 1911, and these are both the largest and nearest the surface, with average depths of respectively. The
Antelope Shale The Antelope Shale is a geologic formation in the San Joaquin Valley of central California. It underlies the Pliocene epoch Etchegoin Formation. It preserves fossils dating back to the Cretaceous period. See also * List of fossiliferous stra ...
, at , and the McDonald, at , are the deepest working pools, and are both in the
Monterey Formation 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 islan ...
itself. The Devilwater-Gould, found in 1980 at a depth of feet, only produced from one well for nine months, and was abandoned. Only two of the pools contained significant enough reserves to be subject to enhanced recovery projects: the Tulare and Diatomite, both of which have been steamflooded, waterflooded, and fireflooded. Operators began steamflooding the Tulare Formation in 1963 in order to increase production rates; as of 1997, this was the only enhanced recovery technology still in use there. Oil from the Tulare Formation is heavy crude, with a specific gravity of 10–13
API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...
, and a low sulfur content of 0.23%, while oil from the Diatomite is classified as medium crude, with an API index of 25–30.


Operations

Belridge Oil Company discovered the field. It retained control of operations until 1979 when
Shell Oil Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yor ...
purchased the company along with most of the production rights on the South Belridge Field for $3.65 billion. Currently
Aera Energy LLC Aera Energy LLC (or simply Aera) is a natural gas, oil exploration and production company started as a joint venture between Shell plc (through Shell USA) and Mobil (which later merged to form ExxonMobil). Headquartered in Bakersfield, Cal ...
is the main operator on the field. They claim a daily production of of oil equivalent (boe/d) from the entire Belridge Unit, with the oil being shipped to the refineries in Martinez and Torrance for processing into gasoline and other products. As of the end of 2006 Aera Energy was the second-largest producer of oil in California, after
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 ...


Solar EOR Project

In November 2017, GlassPoint and
Aera Energy Aera Energy LLC (or simply Aera) is a natural gas, oil exploration and production company started as a joint venture between Shell plc (through Shell USA) and Mobil (which later merged to form ExxonMobil). Headquartered in Bakersfield, Califor ...
announced a joint project to add a solar EOR field to the South Belridge Oil Field. This new facility is projected to produce approximately 12 million barrels of steam per year through a 850MW thermal solar steam generator. It is also projected to cut carbon emissions from the oil field by 376,000 metric tons per year.


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. South Belridge field information is on pp. 36–38. PDF file available on CD from www.consrv.ca.gov. * ''California Department of Conservation, Oil and Gas Statistics, Annual Report, December 31, 2006.''


Notes


External links


100 Years of Oil, from the Bakersfield Californian
stories about local oilfields including the South Belridge
Approximate center of the field, in Google Maps
{{coord, 35.4560, -119.7246, type:landmark_source:enwiki-googlemaplink, display=title Natural gas fields in the United States Oil fields in Kern County, California Geography of the San Joaquin Valley Oil fields in California