Production and Political History
Associated Oil Company discovered the field in June 1911, with the drilling of their "Well No. 1," to a depth of 4,030 feet (1,230 m). The official "discovery" well, however, was drilled by the Standard Oil Company ("Hay No. 1") in January, 1919. By 1912 the field's capacity was considered to be significant enough that President William Howard Taft, concerned about the long-term availability of petroleum for the U.S. Navy, designated the region as the nation's first Naval Petroleum Reserve.
The dusty Elk Hills have a prominent role in U.S. political history, for it was the lease of this land by Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, to Pan American Petroleum in 1922 in return for personal loans at no interest, that brought on the Teapot Dome scandal which ruined the reputation of the administration of Warren G. Harding, now commonly considered to be one of the most corrupt in U.S. history. In 1927 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the lease, and returned the Elk Hills to the U.S. government.
The oil field went largely untapped, held as a reserve, until the mid-1970s, when Congress passed the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act in response to the 1973-1974 Arab Oil Embargo. In 1976 the Carter Administration opened the lands for drilling and production again. NPR-1, operated by Williams Brothers Engineering Company, reached peak production in 1981, pumping 42 million barrels (6.7 million cubic meters) of oil out of the Stevens Pool in that year alone.
A drive to privatize some government lands during the mid-1990s succeeded in 1997 with the sale of the reserve to Occidental Petroleum, the highest bidder. Occidental took over operations in early 1998 and has been the principal operator since then; in 2008 they had a 78% interest in the oil field. Current reserves are claimed to be either 106,554,000 barrels of oil (according to the California Department of Conservation) or 484,000,000 barrels of oil equivalent, according to Occidental Petroleum.
Read more about this topic: Elk Hills Oil Field
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