Kern River Oil Field

The Kern River Oil Field (purple) in south-central California. Other oil fields are shown in gray.
Kern River drilling rigs, 1923
Kern River Oil Field aerial, 2012.
Kern River Oil Field in 1910

The Kern River Oil Field is a large oil field in Kern County in the San Joaquin Valley of California, north-northeast of Bakersfield in the lower Sierra foothills. Yielding a cumulative production of close to 2 billion barrels (320,000,000 m3) of oil by the end of 2006, it is the third largest oil field in California, after the Midway-Sunset Oil Field and the Wilmington Oil Field, and the fifth largest in the United States.[1] Its estimated remaining reserves, as of the end of 2006, were around 476 million barrels (75,700,000 m3), the second largest in the state. It had 9,183 active wells, the second highest in the state.[2] The principal operator on the field is Chevron Corporation[3]

  1. ^ California Department of Conservation, Oil and Gas Statistics, Annual Report, December 31, 2006, p. 4
  2. ^ The largest remaining reserves in California and the greatest number of producing wells belong to the enormous Midway-Sunset Field in southwestern Kern County.
  3. ^ California Department of Conservation, Oil and Gas Statistics, Annual Report, December 31, 2006, p. 2