Can't wait for Jack hammer to get out of the way then further exploration....
California's San Joaquin Valley hosts 5 of the top 25 largest fields in the United States. More than 30,000 producing wells in Kern County alone provide approximately 62% of California's oil production and approximately 9% of national output. For industry experts this is not surprising because the geological conditions for oil and gas entrapment in the San Joaquin Valley are among the best in the Western Hemisphere.
The majority of oil produced in the Maricopa sub-basin and on the Bakersfield arch to the north has come from the Upper Miocene Stevens and older (Eocene) turbidite sands. Directly surrounding this acreage position, five fields produce from Stevens equivalent sands. These fields include Landslide (14.9 MMBoe), Paloma (132.9 MMBoe), Rio Viejo (7.9 MMBoe), San Emido Nose (21.1 MMBoe), and Yowlumne (117.2 MMBoe). These fields all show stratigraphic trapping mechanisms including updip sand pinch-outs, lateral facies variation, and differential compaction. These five fields produced over 1.77 MMBbls of light oil and associated natural gas in 1997 (1997 Production Statistics, California Department of Oil and Gas), and have cumulative aggregate historical production in excess of 300 MMBoe. Per well cumulative production ranges from a low of 690 MBbl to 2.1 MMBbl, with a mean value of 1.3 MMBbl.
New innovations in drilling, hydraulic fracturing, horizontal drilling, and completion techniques have led to high recovery rates of hydrocarbons in the area. Texaco recently reported completion of a horizontal well in Miocene fractured shales in a nearby field with reported initial production of 1,194 Bbl/day of oil and 476,000 cubic feet of gas per day through an 11/64-inch choke with flowing pressure of 300 psi.
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