California's Offshore Petroleum Potential
Authors: Hardoin John L. 
Published: December 2007

This paper was prepared for the 44th Annual California Regional Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in San Francisco, Calif., April 4–5, 1974. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made.

Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.

California's Continental Shelf is about one-fifth as large as the State's mainland area; however, the onshore and offshore areas favorable for oil and gas exploration are about equal in extent. The offshore province of California is estimated to contain province of California is estimated to contain 100 billion barrels of petroleum including 6 billion within producing fields, 5 billion within discovered but unproduced fields, and 89 billion within fields yet to be discovered. The two factors which will have the most influence on ultimate recovery of offshore petroleum are water depth and legislation. petroleum are water depth and legislation. The petroleum industry now has the capability for drilling and completing wells in moderately deep water and research is being conducted on techniques and equipment to operate in even greater depths. Prior to the 1969 blowout in the Santa Barbara Channel, nearly all legislation involving oil in California's Continental Shelf was primarily concerned with ownership and management of leases in contrast to after the blowout, when most actions have either restricted or prohibited offshore petroleum operations. prohibited offshore petroleum operations. Recent developments, aided by the energy shortage, have resulted in lifting the State moratorium on drilling and opening 7.7 million acres of Federal submerged land for leasing. It is estimated that at the present rate of development, less than 1 billion barrels of petroleum will be recovered from California's petroleum will be recovered from California's offshore fields, but under full-scale operations, over 23 billion barrels could ultimately be recovered.

Introduction

California's Continental Shelf consists of 35 thousand square miles and contains an estimated 100 billion barrels of petroleum, including natural gas at 10 Mcf. per barrel of oil. Although the Shelf area is only about one-fifth the size of California's mainland, the onshore and offshore areas underlain by Cretaceous, Tertiary and Quaternary marine sediments are about equal in extent (Figure 1). All known California oil and gas fields are located within these areas.

In this report, the Shelf has been divided into three offshore regions corresponding to the subdivisions used by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in their report on "Future Petroleum Provinces of the United States".