Where to Find Oil in Los Angeles
An Ancient L.A. Story
Which of these locations do you think is an active oil well?
Pico Blvd & Oakhurt Dr, McCitrick Oil Field, The Beverly Center (from left to right)
If you guessed all three, then you'd be correct!
Oil extraction doesn’t just occur in faraway deserts. There is oil drilling happening all across Southern California. Use the map interactive below to see how close you might live to an oil well.
Search for an address to see how many oil wells are nearby
As the map above demonstrates, oil is part of the urban landscape of Los Angeles. Without the oil industry, Los Angeles wouldn’t be the major metropolitan area it is today.
Oil is what made Los Angeles
In 1876, Well No. 4 was drilled in Pico Canyon, Santa Clarita. This well was the first commercially successful oil well in California and in the West.
While Well No. 4 only produced between 30 to 150 barrels of oil per day, it marked the beginning of an era when oil production dominated Southern California’s economy.
Well No. 4 in Santa Clarita, CA in 1877 (source: LA Public Library Photo Collection)
1st Street in Downtown Los Angeles, 1895
By 1903, California would become the nation’s largest oil producer, largely fueled by new oil fields such as the Los Angeles City and McKittrick oil fields. In 1923, Los Angeles alone produced 205 million barrels of oil, accounting for about 20% of the world’s oil supply.
Below is a graph that shows this sharp increase in Southern California’s oil production. Because of its rich oil resources, Southern California is still one of the leading producers of oil in the United States.
But where does all of Southern California's oil come from?
Oil comes from plankton, not dinosaurs
Fossil fuels such as oil do come from fossils, but not dinosaur fossils. To understand where California's oil comes from, you have to look at microscopic plankton called diatoms.
Approximately 14 million years ago, long after the extinction of the dinosaurs, the Earth began to cool. Due to a process called upwelling, nutrient rich water from the bottom of the ocean came up to the surface of Southern California's coastal waters.
The process of how upwelling brings cold, nutrient rich water from the bottom of the ocean to the surface
Diatoms magnified under a microscope. Diatoms make their shells out of silica in a variety of sizes and shapes.
The nutrients brought by upwelling caused an explosion in the abundance of single-cell algae called diatoms.
When these diatoms died, they sank to the bottom of the ocean, forming an organic mud. After millions of years, this mud became buried by layers of sediment and rock.
A piece of the Monterey Shale composed almost entirely of diatoms.
Pressure from the overlying sediment and rocks transformed the organic mud into a rock called shale, or specifically the Monterey Shale.
When the shale was buried between 2,000 to 5,500 meters below the surface, the organic material in the shale became oil. At these depths, the temperatures are between 65°C and 150°C — a range referred to geologists as the “oil window” that is required to form oil.
Where is there oil in Southern California?
The majority of oil found in Southern California is trapped inside the Monterey Shale.
Monterey Shale outcrop at Shell Beach The shale can be seen on land due tectonic activity lifting up from deep in the crust.
The map shows the range of the Monterey Shale across Southern California.
Tap the button below to see all new and active wells.
Do you see a relationship between where there are oil wells and the Monterey Shale?
Where is most of SoCal's oil drilled?
Oil wells are clustered around areas called oil fields. An oil field is an underground pool of oil that can be easily drilled.
This map shows the oil fields in Southern California. The darker the oil field the more oil it produced in 2020.
The future of oil drilling in Los Angeles
On September 15, 2021 the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to end all new oil and gas drilling and eventually phase out existing wells. They cited the many known health risks associated with living close to oil drilling, such as asthma. The fact that 73% of residents who live in close proximity to an oil well are people of color was also cited.
This decision affects all wells in unincorporated Los Angeles County (displayed in the map below). About 1,600 active and idle wells will be affected, including most of the Inglewood Oil Field, the largest oil field in Los Angeles.
Unincorporated Areas of Los Angeles County and Active Oil Wells
