Mountain View Oil Field

The Mountain View Oil Field is a large, mature, but still-productive oil field in Kern County, California, in the United States, in the extreme southern part of the San Joaquin Valley southeast of Bakersfield. It underlies the town of Arvin, as well as some smaller agricultural communities. The field is spread out across a large area, covering just under eight square miles, with wells and storage facilities widely dispersed throughout the area, scattered among working agricultural fields of broccoli and carrots as well as citrus orchards. Discovered in 1933, it has produced over 90Moilbbl of oil in its lifetime, and although declining in production is one of the few inland California fields in which new oil is still being discovered.As of the beginning of 2009, the field had numerous operators, unlike some of the larger, monolithic fields such as the Kern River field to the north, which is entirely owned by Chevron Corporation. Only independent oil companies operate on the Mountain View Field. Of the 175 active wells on the field in 2009, the largest operator was Atlantic Oil Company, with 49 producing wells; the second largest was Sunray Petroleum, with 22. Overall there were 23 separate operators, one of the most of any field in California.Environmental settingUnlike the largest of the Kern County oil fields which occupy the arid hilly region ringing the Central Valley, the Mountain View field is one of several which entirely underlie the flat, richly agricultural valley bottomlands. It is long and relatively narrow, with the productive area of the field being almost fifteen miles (24 km) long from its northwest to southeast extents, and from one to three miles (5 km) across. It consists of discontiguous areas, many of which are small, isolated, and some of which are abandoned. Land use in the field is mainly agricultural, although the field also underlies the entire town of Arvin, as well as several small unincorporated communities. Oil wells are scattered throughout the region, never densely clustered; some are adjacent to homes in Arvin itself, and many are situated within clearings in the area's abundant orchards and fields of row crops.