Southland Oil Business
Whether one sees the abundance of oil below Los Angeles as a blessing or a curse, there is an element of poetic justice to it. L.A. also has the biggest appetite for gasoline of any market in the nation.
The crude oil produced in the Los Angeles Basin accounts for about 230,000 of the 980,000 barrels entering the refineries south of the Tehachapi Mountains each day, industry officials say. The balance comes from Alaska and elsewhere in California.
The refineries’ daily output includes about 450,000 barrels of motor gasoline each day, all but 10,000 of which is consumed locally. That comes out to 18 million gallons a day, which is about what Southern Californians need.
At least one man thought the 1971 earthquake in Southern California was good news. Oil started gurgling up into his garage in the San Fernando Valley, and he ran into the house to tell his startled wife that they were rich.
It turned out to be an oil leak, or seep, caused by the shifting of the earth. And it was nothing more than a headache for the homeowner. It joined the list of hundreds of natural oil seeps in California that typically accumulate a few gallons each year.
Although last October’s earthquake was centered near two big oil reservoirs, the Whittier and Santa Fe Springs fields, officials at the State Division of Oil and Gas say they are unaware of any new seeps triggered by that tremor.
A 1985 study found 94 natural oil or gas leaks in Los Angeles County, nearly half of them in the mid-Wilshire area near the La Brea tar pits, the granddaddy of oil seeps. While most are merely a bother because they must be cleaned up, others are a safety hazard.
State officials have launched a study of recent increased gas pressures below ground in Southern California to gauge the danger to above-ground development. The seepage of water into old oil fields can squeeze the remaining oil and gas upward.
“There does seem to be a certain amount of recharging of shallow gas,” said Rich Manuel of the Long Beach office of the State Division of Oil and Gas. “There is possibly a need to drill some pressure-relief wells.”
Leaks of oil and methane gas from old wells that were carelessly abandoned decades ago are often the culprit. In a 1973 case, oil from an abandoned well cracked the foundation of a Newport Beach home and ultimately pushed the concrete floor two to four feet above ground level.
The recent auctions of the Doheny collection of art and rare books, a legacy of pioneering Los Angeles oilman Edward L. Doheny, attracted plenty of attention. But he wasn’t the only colorful character in those days, and his wasn’t the only art collection.
Nine years before Doheny’s 1892 discovery of oil near downtown--he used the trunk of a eucalyptus tree as a drill, according to oil historian William Rintoul--a young woman made her way west from the New England Conservatory of Music and set up shop as a piano teacher.
By the time oil fever hit, Emma Summers was also dabbling in real estate. She paid $700 for a half interest in a well that struck oil. Smitten, she went into debt to buy more wells, hiring and supervising workmen by day and teaching piano by night.
According to an account by Santa Monica historian Charles Lockwood, by the turn of the century she controlled half the production in the original Doheny field and was selling 50,000 barrels of oil a month to downtown hotels, factories, railroads and Pacific Light & Power. She became known as the Oil Queen of California.
Two decades later, sheriff’s deputies seized about $60,000 worth of oil and water color paintings said to be the property of Summers to satisfy a court judgment against her. It involved a disputed $1,000 debt involving the sale of shares of sugar stock.
She died in Glendale in 1941 at age 83.
