Petroleum geology of Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1, Elk Hills, Kern County, California, with a section on channel turbidite sandstones in the Elk Hills Shale Member of the Monterey Shale

Abstract

Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1 encompasses the Elk Hills oil field and small parts of the Railroad Gap, Asphalto, Buena Vista Hills, and N. Coles Levee oil fields in the S. San Joaquin Valley of California. It consists of 46,095 acres, on which are nearly 1,000 oil wells ready for production. The Elk Hills oil field extends over part of a large anticlinal trend whose surface expression is a line of hills about 17 miles long and 7 miles wide. Elk Hills field is classed among the giant petroleum fields of the world. Ultimate recoverable reserves are presently estimated to be more than 1.3 billion bbl of oil of which less than 300 million bbl have been produced. The field history and unit operation are reviewed, and the stratigraphic and structural aspects of the region are summarized, including producing formations and reservoir zonation. Numerous photographs, maps, and cross sections illustrate the paper. (220 refs.)