page_title: Saticoy Oil Field
section_title: Geology
hierarchical_section_title: Saticoy Oil Field / Geology
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail of Saticoy field; by self using ArcGIS 9.3, public domain data (USGS, DOE, USDA NAIP, etc.)
context_page_description: The Saticoy Oil Field is an oil and gas field in Ventura County, California, in the United States. The field is a long narrow band paralleling the Santa Clara River near the town of Saticoy. Discovered in 1955, it is one of the smaller but productive fields found in the region after most of the large fields had already been operational for decades. At the beginning of 2009 it still contained an estimated 387,000 barrels of recoverable oil out of its original 23.5 million, and had 15 wells remaining in operation. Vintage Production, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, was the primary operator on the field as of 2009.
context_section_description: The Saticoy field is within the Ventura Basin Province of southern California.  Geologically, this area is part of a structural downwarp that occurred during the late Pliocene.  Within the Ventura Basin are some of the richest agricultural fields in California, made possible by the thick alluvial topsoil left by tens of thousands of years of floods from the area's river systems.  The basin is filled with sedimentary layers, and cut through from northeast to southwest by the Oak Ridge Fault.
  In the Saticoy field, oil is trapped both in pinchouts of updipping permeable sedimentary units within units of lesser permeability, and in sedimentary units which end abruptly at the Oak Ridge Thrust Fault; oil migrating upwards within permeable units, in this case, encounters an impermeable barrier of rock placed there by the fault.  Horizontally, the fault defines the course of the Santa Clara River and the northern base of the hills south of the river (including South Mountain), and is part of the fault complex responsible for the 1994 Northridge earthquake.  The fault bounds the field on the southeast; many of the oil-bearing units have been deformed so as to be aligned almost vertically, especially in the lower zones.  The sedimentary units are predominantly turbidites, and are of Pleistocene and Pliocene age.  From the top down, the units are the Pleistocene Santa Barbara Formation, which contains the producing horizon labeled the "Upper F Zone"; and the Upper Pliocene Pico Sand, which contains the horizons labeled "Lower F Zone", "G Zone", "H Zone", "I Zone", "J Zone", and "K Zone."  Most of the oil is between 6,000 and 9,000 feet (1,800 and 2,700 m) below ground surface.
  Oil is of medium gravity and low sulfur content throughout, varying little between the different producing horizons.  API gravity varies from 30 to 36.  The shallowest producing formation, the Upper F Zone, has an average depth of 6,350 feet (1,940 m) below ground surface, and the deepest, the K, has an average depth of 9,035 feet (2,754 m).
caption: Detail of the Saticoy field, showing its location relative to Ventura, Oxnard, and other urbanized areas.  Yellow dots represent locations of active oil wells as of 2008.
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