page_title: Oxnard Oil Field
section_title: History, production and operations
hierarchical_section_title: Oxnard Oil Field / History, production and operations
caption_attribution_description: English: Oil wells, tanks, and burn-off flame (left). Agriculture irrigation pipes storage (foreground).
context_page_description: The Oxnard Oil Field is a large and currently productive oil field in and adjacent to the city of Oxnard, in Ventura County, California in the United States. Its conventional oil reserves are close to exhaustion, with only an estimated one percent of the original oil recoverable with current technology remaining: 434,000 barrels out of an original 43.5 million. However, the reservoir includes an enormous deposit of tar sands, ultra-heavy oil classed as an unconventional petroleum reserve, and potentially containing 400 million barrels of oil equivalent, should it become economically feasible to extract. Present operators on the field include Tri-Valley Oil & Gas Co., Anterra Energy Services, Inc., Chase Production Co., and Occidental Petroleum through its Vintage Production subsidiary. As of the beginning of 2009, there were 34 active wells on the field.
context_section_description: The field was discovered in January 1937 by Vaca Oil Exploration Co., which drilled into tar sands about 2,800 feet (850 m) below ground surface.  In spite of the extremely viscous petroleum deposits in the producing formation, which they named after their firm – the Pliocene "Vaca" Tar Sand – they were able to produce about 50 barrels per day (7.9 m³/d).  In May of that same year they discovered tar sands in the underlying Monterey Formation from which they were able to produce about 90 barrels (14 m³) of oil per day.
  More adventurous drillers found deeper producing horizons with lighter oil.  In 1953 and 1954 the McInnes, Lucas, and Livingston pools were brought online, producing oil of API gravity 24, 32 and 25-36 respectively.  Waterflooding operations in these deeper reservoirs in the 1960s assisted production, but most wells in these horizons were abandoned as the last economically recoverable oil was extracted; a few remained as water disposal wells, as it is usually both economically and environmentally preferable to reinject wastewater back into a depleted reservoir than to treat and release it on the surface.  In 2008 only two wells remained active in the deep McInnes reservoir; all the others were in the shallow tar sands.
  Under the California Department of Conservation well adoption rule, Tri-Valley Oil & Gas Company acquired 20 wells formerly operated by defunct GEO Petroleum, Inc., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1998.  Wells declared deserted by the State – typically due to the dissolution of the operator – are open to adoption and redevelopment under the "orphan well" rule, with the written consent of the owner of the mineral rights to the property as well as the State Department of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources.  In 2008 Tri-Valley began redeveloping these wells and bringing them back to production.
  Oil produced in the field goes to the small (2,800-barrel (450 m³)-per-day) Oxnard Refinery, owned by Tenby, Inc., in an unincorporated area south of Fifth Street near the eastern Oxnard city limit.  This refinery also processes oil from the West Montalvo field on the coast directly west of the Oxnard field.
caption: Oil wells, tanks, and burn-off flame (left). Agriculture irrigation pipes storage (foreground).
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