Los Angeles Oil Hidden in Plain Sight!
To get a great view of the Beverly Center drilling site, enter the parking garage on foot from the ground level, and take the elevators/escalators up to an upper level. From there, you can look east to see the drilling operation. If you choose to enter the garage in your car and drive up, be warned that it is $1 to enter, and $1 for every 4 hours after that.
The layers underneath Los Angeles is home to one of the largest oil reserves in the country. Oil comes from organic plant and animal material that becomes buried under layer after layer of sand and other sediment. Over time, heat and pressure of being continually buried contribute to the decomposition of the organic material, turning it into oil. Varying amounts of pressure and heat actually result in different types of oil (and even natural gas!) being created. Oil becomes lighter, the more heat it receives during the formation process.
This particular site draws oil from the Beverly Hills Oil Field and the Salt Lake Oil Field. I have another earthcache highlighting the Beverly Hills Oil Field if you wish to read more about it there! The Salt Lake Oil Field was once the most productive oil field in California. This field is bordered by the Santa Monica Fault. This fault, although not active, distinguishes the border between the mountains and the LA basin. Other faults cut through the Salt Lake field, including the 3rd Street Fault and the 6th Street Fault. The upper layer of this field is capped by the Pico Formation, formed in the Upper Pliocene, and does not contain petroleum. Underneath this, oil extraction is taking place in the Repetto Sands, a feature formed in the Pliocene Era, and the Puente Formation. Both these formations are heavily folded and faulted (contorted due to fault line activity), forming structural "traps" for oil.
Los Angeles has a rich history of oil drilling, with wells popping up as fast as prospectors and companies could construct them in the late 19th century. There are massive oil fields underneath the entire city, and the harvest of these fossil fuels played a huge role in the development of Los Angeles. During this early free-for-all with little to no regulation, there was a distinct separation between the oil fields and residential areas. These two types of development were kept separate. By the 1930’s, California was producing almost a quarter of the world’s oil, and the population exploded. Due to lack of understanding of health and environmental cancers, residential and commercial development began to overlap the oil fields. Pretty soon, Los Angeles became the largest urban oil field in the country, with thousands of wells still pumping oil amidst the throngs of roughly 10 million people. Today, roughly 580,000 Angelenos live less than a quarter mile from an active oil well, and they may not even know it. Many oil wells in Los Angeles have been cleverly disguised to keep residents’ minds off the activity happening in their own backyard.
Here we are viewing the Beverly Center drill site, owned now by Sentinel Peak Resources. It is walled off and hedges have been placed around it, yet the view from the parking garage here offers a much better view. There are 54 active wells within this compound, unassumingly tucked behind the shopping mall. It purposely was hidden on a side street to blend in behind the Beverly Center and not cause any suspicion. However, it still produces tens of thousands of barrels of the coveted black gold every year.
To log this Earthcache, please send the following:
- Name of this cache and number of people in your group.
- Stand outside the wall of the Beverly Hils site before (or after) viewing it from the upper levels of the parking garage (listed as an additional waypoint). Can you smell any oil being extracted? Why or why not?
- Knowing that this site is tapping into two different oil fields, how do you think the infrastructure differs? AKA What differences in the two oil fields would have implications for how the company extracts oil from each (depth, complexity of layers, faults, etc)?
Sources:
https://wehoville.com/2012/11/15/about-the-active-oil-well-behind-the-beverly-center/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Lake_Oil_Field#cite_note-LATimes1-11
http://www.stand.la/history-of-oil-in-los-angeles.html
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/central-energy-resources-science-center/science/los-angeles-basin-oil-and-gas-assessments
https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0309/report.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Hills_Oil_Field#Geology
https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/hidden-oil-wells/
http://www.laalmanac.com/energy/en14.php
https://www.beg.utexas.edu/gccc/co2-data/repetto-09
https://www.croftsystems.net/oil-gas-blog/how-was-oil-formed/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetto_Formation