The Kern Front Oil Field is a large
oil and gas field in the lower
Sierra Nevada foothills
:''See Sierra Nevada for general information about the mountain range in the United States.''
The ecology of the Sierra Nevada, located in the U.S. states of California and Nevada, is diverse and complex. The combination of climate, topography, ...
in
Kern County, California
Kern County is a county (United States), county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 909,235. Its county seat is Bakersfield, California, Bakersfield.
Kern County compris ...
. Discovered in 1912, and with a cumulative production of around of oil, it ranks 29th in size in the state, and is believed to retain approximately ten percent of its original oil (approximately ), according to the official estimates of the California Department of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR). It is adjacent to the much larger
Kern River Oil Field, which is to the southeast, and the
Mount Poso Oil Field to the north.
Setting
The Kern Front Field is approximately due north of the city of
Oildale, and north of
Bakersfield
Bakersfield is a city in and the county seat of Kern County, California, United States. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, which is located in the Central Valley region.
Bakersfield's population as of the ...
, in the first gentle rise of the hills above the floor of the
San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley ( ; Spanish language in California, Spanish: ''Valle de San Joaquín'') is the southern half of California's Central Valley (California), Central Valley. Famed as a major breadbasket, the San Joaquin Valley is an importa ...
. It is about long by , with the long axis being in the north-south direction, comprising a productive surface area of . Elevations vary from approximately above sea level. The field is spread out, especially compared to the exceedingly dense development in the adjacent Kern River Oil Field, which has one of the densest oil developments in the United States, with over 9,000 oil wells clustered in just several square miles. The Kern Front Field is bounded on the west by
California State Route 65
State Route 65 (SR 65) is a north-south state highway in the U.S. state of California. It is composed of two segments in the Central Valley. The southern segment begins at SR 99, near Bakersfield and terminates at SR 198 near Exeter. It also ...
, on the southwest by James Road, and on the southeast by Bakersfield-Glennville Road. Oilfields Road runs south to north through the field.
Being within the ecological subsection of the
California Central Valley
The Central Valley is a broad, elongated, flat valley that dominates the interior of California, United States. It is wide and runs approximately from north-northwest to south-southeast, inland from and parallel to the Pacific coast. It cover ...
known as the Hardpan Terraces, at an elevation of less than , the predominant native vegetation is
needlegrass. The climate is hot and arid, with summertime temperatures routinely exceeding ; the mean freeze-free period runs from about 250 to 300 days. Mean annual precipitation is around , almost all as rain and almost all in the winter; summers are characteristically rainless.
Geology

The Kern Front Field contains two major producing units, the
Etchegoin Formation and the
Chanac
Chanac () is a commune in the Lozère department in southern France.
See also
*Communes of the Lozère department
The following is a list of the 152 communes of the Lozère department of France
France, officially the French Republic ...
, both sedimentary, but
unconformably
An unconformity is a buried erosional or non-depositional surface separating two rock masses or strata of different ages, indicating that sediment deposition was not continuous. In general, the older layer was exposed to erosion for an interval o ...
overlain. The Etchegoin is a
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58[Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...](_blank)
Kern River Formation, which is highly productive in the adjacent Kern River Oil Field. These units all have a northwest strike and a small southwest dip. A large north-trending fault on the east side of the field provides a
structural seal on that side; on the northeast, the up-dip side of the field, the sands grade into relatively impermeable silts and clays, providing a seal in that direction. Many small southwest-trending faults run across the field. The California DOGGR recognizes only one producing pool – the Etchegoin-Chanac – and commingles the production data.
Many sedimentary units underlie these petroleum-bearing sands, but they either have not produced much oil or have not been completely explored. Basement rocks – the granitic complex representing the huge
Sierra Nevada batholith
The Sierra Nevada Batholith is a large batholith that is approximately 400 miles long and 60-80 miles wide which forms the core of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, exposed at the surface as granite.
The batholith is composed of ...
, and probably of late
Jurassic
The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 143.1 Mya. ...
age – occur at a depth of approximately . The deepest well on the Kern Front Field, the
Atlantic Richfield Company
Arco may refer to:
Places
* Arco, Trentino, a town in Trentino, Italy
* Arco, Idaho, in the United States
* Arco, Minnesota, a city in the United States
* ARCO Arena in Sacramento, California, home of the Sacramento Kings
Companies
* ARCO (bran ...
"Kramer No. 1", reached a depth of before bumping into the basement complex.
Oil from the field is heavy crude, with an
API gravity
The American Petroleum Institute gravity, or API gravity, is a measure of how heavy or light a petroleum liquid is compared to water: if its API gravity is greater than 10, it is lighter and floats on water; if less than 10, it is heavier and sinks ...
averaging 14, and a sulfur content of 0.9 percent by weight. Since this oil is heavy, it is viscous and flows easily only when assisted by steam injection or other enhanced recovery techniques.
The average depth of the oil bearing units is about , and the thickness of the oil-bearing strata ranges from . Since the depth of the oil is relatively shallow, the temperature is relatively low, at only (many of the deeper zones in Central Valley oil fields produce oil over , a greater safety hazard to workers). In 1983, the date of DOGGR's data compilation, the water table in the field was at below ground surface.
History, production, and operations
Standard Oil Company of California
Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation predominantly specializing in oil and gas. The second-largest direct descendant of Standard Oil, and originally known as the Standard Oil Company of California (shortened to ...
discovered the field in 1912 with the drilling of their Well No. 1, into the Etchegoin pool, to a depth of . The well still exists, as
Chevron Corp. Well No. 1. Peak production for the field was in 1929, during which of oil were pumped from the ground.
Production steadily declined from that peak until the invention of the
steam injection method in the 1960s. Cyclic steam injection (the "huff and puff method" began in 1964, and production again rose, as the heavy oil flowed more freely to pumping wells. In 1978, former operator
Chevron Corp. began steam flooding in the southern portion of the field, and Century Oil Management did the same in the northern portion. Petro-Lewis Corporation tested steam foam solution and a steam foam encapsulated in a polymer gel to see if steamflood performance could be improved.
Gas production on the field peaked in 1980.
One of the current operators, Tearlach Resources, has claimed that the field may actually contain a potential reserve of . This estimate is based on work done by the operators of the field in 1990,
Mobil
Mobil Oil Corporation, now known as just Mobil, is a petroleum brand owned and operated by American oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil, formerly known as Exxon, which took its current name after history of ExxonMobil#merger, it and Mobil merge ...
,
ARCO
Arco may refer to:
Places
* Arco, Trentino, a town in Trentino, Italy
* Arco, Idaho, in the United States
* Arco, Minnesota, a city in the United States
* ARCO Arena in Sacramento, California, home of the Sacramento Kings
Companies
* ARCO (b ...
and
Occidental, and involves both recovering previously uneconomic deposits, as well as exploring deeper, previously unexplored zones, which some of the geologists believed may be petroleum-bearing.
As of the beginning of 2009, there were 838 producing oil wells on the field.
[ p. 63] If some of the current proposals for further exploration and development are enacted, such as those by Tearlach, this number could increase considerably.
Current operators include Bellaire, Vintage, E&B Natural Resource Management, West American Energy Corp., and a few others. The field operators deliver some wastewater from oil production to Valley Waste Disposal, with some wastewater being filtered and softened to make feedwater for steam boilers. Valley Waste skims residual oil and grease from the water, and the water is conveyed to Cawelo Water District, where it is re-used for irrigation.
Public Notice Concerning Intent to Issue a Time Schedule Order, California Regional Water Quality Control Board, Central Valley Region.
/ref>
References
* ''California Oil and Gas Fields, Volumes I, II and III''. Vol. I (1998), Vol. II (1992), Vol. III (1982). California Department of Conservation, Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR). 1,472 pp. McKittrick Oil Field information pp. 268-272. PDF file available on CD from www.consrv.ca.gov.
* ''California Department of Conservation, Oil and Gas Statistics, Annual Report, December 31, 2006.''
Notes
{{coord, 35.4844, -119.0403, type:landmark_source:enwiki-googlemaplink, display=title
Oil fields in Kern County, California