Oil-Drilling Plan Draws Questions : Torrance Residents Fear Project Could Pose Threat to Homes

A proposed drilling project aimed at recovering up to 27 million barrels of oil from beneath a southeast Torrance neighborhood is generating protests from residents who fear that it could pose a threat to their homes.

A handful of homeowners complained to the Torrance City Council on Tuesday night that an environmental impact statement failed to address adequately the visual, noise and water-quality impacts associated with the drilling project.

Kelt Oil & Gas, a Torrance-based company, wants to drill 108 oil wells beneath the largely residential, 560-acre area in an effort to tap oil reserves worth more than $300 million even at today’s depressed, $12-a-barrel oil prices. The wells would be drilled at an angle from a site at Sepulveda Boulevard and Border Avenue.

But after nearly two hours of public testimony and debate, the City Council postponed a decision on the adequacy of the environmental impact statement for three weeks while additional information is obtained and revised plans for the drilling site are prepared.

Once the environmental impact statement is approved, both the city and the state must review and issue permits for the project.

The water flood recovery project, as it is called, like several others in Torrance, involves injecting water into the sands nearly 2,000 feet below ground to force the oil to the surface. The oil fields have already been tapped by traditional wells, and additional pressure is needed to force the remaining oil through the sands.

But residents of the area worry that the drilling project could put pressure on an estimated 425 old, mostly abandoned oil wells near their homes, threaten water quality, generate excessive noise and create visual pollution.

“I just feel this is an unsafe project in an area where there are so many residents,” said Marjorie Maxwell of Torrance. The city did not have a population estimate for the area, but it has more than 3,400 property owners.

Maxwell said she was not convinced that the oil recovery project can be accomplished without accidents that would destroy property and endanger residents.

“The City Council will regret this approval,” Maxwell said.

Water Source

Sue Herbers, president of the Southeast Torrance Homeowners Assn., raised questions about the source of the water for the injection wells. “We are concerned about where this water is coming from,” she said.

James C. Crisp, a Huntington Beach consultant hired by the city to prepare the environmental impact study, replied that it would likely be briny ground water beneath the area, which would be pumped to the surface and then reinjected. “There shouldn’t be any surface contamination,” he said. “It should not cause adverse impacts.”

Gregg E. Martin, Kelt Oil’s Pacific Division manager, said that without water flooding, only 2.2 million barrels of oil could be recovered from the southeast Torrance oil field. With water injection, he said, up to 27 million barrels could be pumped over a 30-year period.

The oil would be immediately transported by pipeline to refineries in the South Bay area and would not be stored on the site, Martin said.

When Maxwell asked how many capped and abandoned oil wells in the project site are underneath houses, no one had the answer.

“Some wells may be under houses,” said Steven A. Fields of the state Division of Oil and Gas, who attended the meeting. “We don’t know.”

Fields said the division does know that measures to mitigate the drilling project’s impact will certainly be needed for 25 oil wells in the area, including 23 abandoned wells.

Fields said the state will require Kelt Oil to put a new well next to some of the abandoned wells to relieve any pressure buildup from the water injection. “The chance of fluid coming to the surface is minimal,” he said.

Kelt attorney Peter Lacombe said the company will survey the abandoned well sites and report back to the city within two weeks about whether any are under houses.

Lacombe said the oil company will also provide new drawings of the drilling site. Mayor Katy Geissert expressed dismay that Kelt Oil had not complied with a request she made last October to present plans for putting the drilling site below ground to reduce its visual impact.

“What we got is not what I asked for at all,” Geissert said.

Crisp told council members that the 160-foot-tall drilling rigs would be “highly visible, there is no doubt about that.”