Kettleman North Dome Oil Field - History, Production, and Operations

History, Production, and Operations

The presence of a large oil field was long suspected in the Kettleman Hills region, since it is an anticlinal structure like so many of the nearby San Joaquin Valley oil fields; however, early test wells found nothing, since early drilling methods lacked the ability to drill the 7,000 feet (2,100 m) necessary to tap the huge reservoirs. Before 1910, drillers made nine separate unsuccessful attempts to reach oil.

Finally a persistent attempt paid off. In 1927, the Milham Company drilled its Elliott No. 1 well: after 19 months of labor, in October 1928, at a depth of 7,108 feet (2,167 m), they hit oil and a terrific blowout ensued, which took three years to bring under control at this one well. Elliott No. 1 and other wells in the huge Temblor pool produced 3,670 barrels a day during that period; the initial measured pressure was 3,540 psi (24,400 kPa) The town of Avenal, originally named Milham City after the oil company, quickly grew near the field, the latest in a series of oil boom towns in the California Central Valley.

Unrestricted production of oil at the Kettleman Hills fields, mainly North Dome, was controversial during the 1930s. Other states, such as Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, restricted production of oil through agreements with each other, in order to keep the price from falling too far; however, in California no such regulation existed. Overproduction from Kettleman, with its depressant effect on the price of oil, was a cause of considerable antagonism in the oil industry at the time. Production from Kettleman peaked in 1936, with over 29 million barrels pumped during that year, making it one of the most productive fields in the United States. In 2006, the latest year for which data was available, production was a mere 128,000 barrels, even with the modern technologies available.

Unlike many of the other major California oil fields, enhanced recovery methods have been used minimally at Kettleman Hills. Water flooding was used in both the Temblor and Vaqueros pools, between 1965 and 1977, but many of the enhanced recovery methods used successfully at other oil fields – steam flooding, fire flooding, gas injection, and so forth, which were so successful at Kern River, San Ardo, Midway-Sunset and elsewhere – have proved impractical, both because of the relatively light API gravity of the Kettleman Hills oil as well as the depth of the reservoirs.

J.P. Oil Company, Inc., of Lafayette, Louisiana, took over operation of the entire Kettleman Hills North Dome Oil Field in 1997, but as of 2008 the oil field is run by Chevron Corporation.