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Oxy oil discovery could spark new interest in California's energy potential... http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cal-oil24-2009sep24,0,3884900.story
2 of 4 9/28/2009 12:24 PM
By Ronald D. White
September 24, 2009
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A few years ago, Occidental Petroleum Corp.
executive Stephen I. Chazen sounded like a
cryptologist out of a Dan Brown novel as he told
investors that an oil bonanza awaited any outfit
that could "crack the code" of California's
seismically fractured underground.
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Occidental's engineers may have done it.
The Westwood company revealed in July that it
An oil rig in the Elk Hills Oil Field near Bakersfield. had found the equivalent of 150 million to 250
Occidental Petroleum says it has made the state's biggest oil million barrels of oil and natural gas in an
and natural gas find in 35 years in Kern County but did not
disclose the site. (Gary Kazanjian / For The Times) undisclosed part of Kern County using
techniques that the oil company's executives
would rather not talk about. It was California's
Elk Hills Oil Field
biggest find in 35 years.
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Some experts say it could herald a period of new exploration in
California and the U.S.
"Certainly this kind of success will send other people back to
California to rethink the geology and rethink the theories of the
area," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy
Research Associates and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
history of the oil industry "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil,
Money and Power."
Joe Hahn knows firsthand the significance of finding that
much crude in California.
A former oil reservoir engineer for Arco, now owned by oil
giant BP, Hahn said that exploration in the state has been rife
with failures and false leads.
"We had considerable acreage that turned out to be good as
goat pasture," said Hahn, now a professor at Pepperdine
University's Graziadio School of Business and Management. "It's very rare to have a find of this size"
this late in California's oil-production history.
Despite steady declines in petroleum output to about 214.5 million barrels last year from about 394
million barrels at the 1985 peak, California still ranks fourth in the nation behind the combined
federal offshore drilling sites and Texas and Alaska.
Promise, Peril in South L.A.
»
Bruce Bullock, executive director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University in
Dallas, said there has been renewed interest in many old oil regions long believed to have given up
most or all of their crude.
"We're seeing quite a bit of activity," Bullock said. "A: They think they can find more oil; B: They think
they can get it out of the ground."
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Over the last decade, Occidental has been actively acquiring leases and drilling rights in California as
most other big oil companies have been selling out. But Occidental executives weren't the only people
who thought that California might have a surprising amount of oil left to exploit.
The U.S. Geological Survey travels the country to assess petroleum reserves and the potential for new
discoveries. In 2003 and again in 2007, its geologists said that it was likely that an additional 4 billion
barrels "may be added to reserves in existing oil fields."
As Occidental's Chazen put it, "We had a small amount of production in California, historically, but we
made a commitment to explore in the state. Even so, it has taken us the better part of 10 years to get
where we are now."