Cat Canyon Oil Field | |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Region | Santa Maria Basin |
Location | Santa Barbara County, California |
Offshore/onshore | onshore |
Operators | Greka Energy (HVI Cat Canyon, Inc.), ERG Operating Company LLC, Vintage Production, B.E. Conway |
Field history | |
Discovery | 1908 |
Start of development | 1908 |
Start of production | 1908 |
Peak year | 1953 |
Production | |
Current production of oil | 795 barrels per day (~39,600 t/a) |
Year of current production of oil | 2009 |
Estimated oil in place | 2.132 million barrels (~2.909×10 5 t) |
Producing formations | Monterey Shale (fractured), Sisquoc Formation |
The Cat Canyon Oil Field is a large oil field in the Solomon Hills of central Santa Barbara County, California, about 10 miles southeast of Santa Maria. It is the largest oil field in Santa Barbara County, and as of 2010 is the 20th-largest in California by cumulative production.[1]
The field was discovered in 1908, just seven years after the nearby Orcutt field. At first it was developed slowly, because of difficulties in drilling and keeping wells productive, but as ever-richer reservoirs were revealed in the next two decades it gradually became one of the most productive fields in the state. A mature field in decline, estimated reserves have dwindled to 2.3 million barrels, less than one percent of the total produced in the preceding century. A total of 243 wells remained active, although a field revitalization program commenced by ERG Resources in 2011 intends to extend the field's lifetime by extracting reserves previously considered unrecoverable.[2] The largest operators currently active on the field are Greka Energy with 168 active wells, and ERG, who plans to bring over 300 shut-in wells back into production.[3][4]