October 31, 1975 - Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum

The Huntington Beach oil field is located in Orange CountYt California,
about 15 miles southeast of the city of Long Beach. The field is in
the Los Angeles Basin situated both onshore and offshore.
The producing sands are in an alternating sand-shale sequence principally
in the Repetto Series of the Lower Pliocene age and the Puente
Series of the Upper Miocene age. Drilling depths range from 1,800
feet to 5,500 feet (true vertical depths).
The field con5ists of three distinct structural features. One is a
simple anticline offshore, to the southwest, that is relatively
unfaulted. The second is a complexly faulted central area which
lies between the Ocean Avenue and the Inglewood fault systems. The
final is a generally northeasterly dipping flank to the northeast of the
Inglewood fault system. The accumulations are controlled by structure t
by faulting, by interbedded shales, by the overlying Pico shale t
and by bottom water. The field has 5,300 productive acres (8 square
miles) of which some 2,300 acres lie offshore in State controlled
waters.
A number of producing mechanisms are active in the various sand groups
and in the different producing areas. The crude appeared to be
initially undersaturated. The primary recovery mechanism was principally
fluid expansion and dissolved gas drive. An active water
drive is present in at least one of the medium sized reservoirs.
Most of the major reservoir units are either under active water
flood or they have future water flood secondary reserves indicated
on the Summary Table. One of the shallow reservoirs, producing
heavy crude oil, has responded well to cyclic steam injection and
steam drive operations are under study. However, the consultant
firm has not yet included steam drive secondary reserves in the
indicated category because of failure of the two steam drive projects
which have been carried out thus far. Water flooding is not considered
possible for some of the reservoir units in the highly faulted areas.
The consultant firm has estimated proved reserves on a reservoir
basis for the fourteen most important reservoirs in the various field
areas. The future production decline rates are estimated to be quite
severe because of the generally advanced nature of most of the active
water floods and the likelihood that additional water flood activities
and offshore development cannot be carried out in the forecast time
span. In the offshore area there are proved reserves which cannot
be reached by slant wells from either onshore drilling sites or
existing platforms. The consultant firm does not contemplate that
the existing environmentalist climate will permit the exploitation
of these reserves in the next ten years. Approvals Qr permissions
from 13 different agenices would be required.
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