Well, Well: Oil Rigs Return

They once ruled Southern California, staking claim to broad stretches of coastline and hillsides. Then, in the 1980s, they began vanishing -- driven from their native habitat by tract houses, mini-malls and pesky environmentalists.

By the time gasoline prices barreled into the stratosphere this year, local oil wells had become the industrial equivalent of an endangered species.

From a peak population of 33,000, they dwindled to about 4,000. Surviving drills were forced to forage in strange locations, such as restaurant parking lots, residential lawns and inside faux office buildings.

Today, these holdout rigs stand as a symbol of both a bygone era and -- oddly -- the future.

Because of technological breakthroughs and rising demand for petroleum, the previously doomed hulks have gained a new lease on life. And abandoned wells are being pressed back into service.

If crude prices spiral high enough, “it might get to the point where people start tearing down houses to drill for oil,” said Rich Baker, who oversees the Southern California branch of the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. “It’s happened before

In recent months, “we’ve had companies putting 45-year-old wells back into production,” said Rock Zierman, spokesman for the California Independent Petroleum Assn.

Iraj Ershagi, director of USC’s petroleum engineering program, predicts that the number of abandoned wells -- about 3,000 statewide -- might soon drop to zero.

But he said people probably wouldn’t notice the resurgence of drilling. Since 1943, when Shell Oil pioneered the first “noiseless” derrick -- swaddled in fluffy insulation -- oil pumps have grown increasingly adaptable to urban settings.

In Signal Hill, grasshopper-style rigs drill for oil behind backyards, next to a Starbucks, in public parks and on the edge of a cemetery.

At Huntington Beach City Hall, three drills lurk in the parking lot. Like giant mechanical mosquitoes, they spend their days slurping up syrupy crude from beneath the earth’s skin.

Some wells try to blend in with their surroundings. In the waters off Long Beach, rigs have disguised themselves as tropical islands with 45-foot waterfalls, banana trees, hibiscus and carved tikis. At night, the illuminated oases look like “giant orange, lemon and blue Popsicles looming out of the sea,” one writer said.

Elsewhere, drills have masqueraded as a Venice Beach lighthouse and a 13-story office building. The derrick at Beverly Hills High School hides inside a decorated tower.

But oil wells haven’t always been so unobtrusive.

Flash back to the 1890s, when prospector Edward Doheny transformed a 60-foot tree trunk into a primitive drill and struck a vein of black gold near Echo Park. Aspiring Jed Clampetts promptly ripped up homes in downtown Los Angeles and planted a forest of oil derricks.

The same thing happened in Huntington Beach in the 1920s and ‘50s, according to news accounts. Colonies of pumps sprang up along local beaches. Just up the coast, Signal Hill became carpeted with so many derricks that it was nicknamed Porcupine Hill.

Then, in 1969, a massive oil spill tarred the shoreline in Santa Barbara -- and public opinion began to sour.

The backlash gained ground in the 1980s and ‘90s. As oil prices nosedived and land values and environmental restrictions soared, oil companies decided it was more lucrative to replace rigs with houses.

A surprising hunk of Los Angeles County and Orange County real estate now rests atop oil reservoirs, according to state maps of abandoned wells.

As oil attorney Bruce Webster once complained to Los Angeles magazine: “They ruined a perfectly good oil field by building a city on top of it.”

It was a shortsighted move, said USC’s Ershagi: “In L.A., we’ve shut down many wells after only 20% to 25% of the oil is extracted. That’s ridiculous.”

In contrast, Norway drains at least 50% of a reserve -- the approximate upper limit using current technology -- before allowing a well to be plugged, he noted.

To ease the current energy crunch, Ershagi favors replenishing Southern California’s stock of urban oil rigs. But this time, there’s no need to knock down homes, he said. Modern slant-angle drills can tap into oil pockets six miles from the actual pump.

But slant drilling is costly, so some petroleum barons prefer performing CPR on abandoned wells.

*

Steering a golf cart around Coyote Hills Golf Course in Fullerton, Tim Duncan represents urban oil drilling’s new face.

Duncan manages the hilly course, which serves as an Audubon International-certified wildlife sanctuary for gnatcatchers, cactus wrens and other critters. It’s also home to two dozen oil rigs and a sprawling petroleum processing plant.

The rigs are connected by underground pipes to storage tanks in the middle of the course. The liquid they siphon from the soil is 90% water, a common trait for Southern California wells. From that brew, an inky crude, redolent of gasoline, is extracted and shipped to refineries.

Tanker trucks rumble in and out of Coyote Hills along golf cart paths specially built to handle the heavy vehicles. Faux rocks along the course are painted with signs that warn golfers: “Caution: Oil Truck Traffic.”

Duncan, who keeps sample jars of crude in his office cupboard, believes Coyote Hills strikes a good balance between commercial and ecological interests: “It’s a great way to give back to the community while still producing oil.”

Nevertheless, many humans remain wary of drilling. In downtown Huntington Beach, where aging rocking-horse pumps sit sandwiched between houses and behind a Dairy Queen, residents grumble about fumes, aesthetics and safety.

And with some reason. The quest for oil has produced some freakish side effects.

In 1973, a retired sea captain’s Newport Beach cottage began filling with bubbling crude from an abandoned well underneath.

A few years later, a real estate agent who was getting ready to show a Newport house flipped on a light switch and the place burst into flames. No one was injured in the blaze, which was blamed on methane gas from an old well.

Oil drilling also caused a swath of Long Beach to sink 29 feet in the 1950s, cracking buildings, roads and bridges. Engineers began injecting the ground with water to halt further subsiding.

In April 2004, an abandoned well in Huntington Beach spewed oil 40 feet into the air, coating nearby sidewalks, plants and cars with a gooey layer of homegrown “Texas tea.”

But not everyone considers oil drilling an eyesore. Orange County artist JoAnn Cowans has been painting oil rigs since the 1960s, after she moved to California from North Carolina and “fell in love” with the derricks at Venice Beach.

“They looked like wonderful abstract sculptures,” she explains on her website.

The Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton recently showcased Cowans’ work, which includes such titles as “Derricks After the Rain.”

Other black-gold aficionados include the West Kern Oil Museum in Taft, which is designed to resemble a 1920s petroleum company camp, complete with towering wooden derrick. At the gift shop, visitors can buy oil derrick cookie cutters.

One of the oldest traces of Orange County’s oil heritage can be found in the middle of Olinda Ranch, a pricey new housing tract in the foothills of Brea. There, a 1912 oil field house and a still-working 1897 well highlight the 12-acre Olinda Historic Museum and Park.

The museum aims to “recapture the sights, sounds and smells” of the once-bustling oil town, which vanished by the early 1940s.

Visitors can “travel back in time to explore what life was like as an Olinda wildcatter,” according to a brochure. The trick is to ignore all the million-dollar homes that now border the park.