HUNTINGTON BEACH : City Bids Farewell to Bluff-Top Oil Wells

Paul Cook was surprised and dismayed by a state environmental report several years ago that called Huntington Beach the “ugliest stretch of coastline in the entire state.”

Cook, a former public works director, recently recalled that he challenged the validity of such criticism but agreed that the dozens of aging oil wells dotting the northern strip of beach hardly made for a post-card glimpse of the Pacific shore. “I figured it was time we made an attempt to start cleaning that up,” he said.

Now, almost five years later, Cook is retired from city government. And the last of 29 bluff-top oil wells are finally scheduled to be dismantled.

The City Council last week agreed to pay $100,000 to Shell Western E & P, Inc. to remove the last four wells, which Shell owns, along the bluffs between Golden West and 17th streets. Shell will contribute $60,000 toward the project, said Bill Gibson, the firm’s public relations director.

The wells date back to the oil boom of the 1920s, when companies drilled all over the city.

The city’s agreement with Shell comes only months after Chevron U.S.A. removed the last of its 25 beachfront wells.

The council in March agreed to pay $650,000 of Chevron’s cost to eliminate the low-producing wells. Chevron officials have not disclosed how much they spent on the project.

Cook, however, said that during his original negotiations with the firm, Chevron had sought $3.5 million from the city for the job. Public Works Director Louis Sandoval said he believes that Huntington Beach “got an excellent deal” in buying out the wells.

But some council members, including Grace Winchell, have questioned why the city has had to pay the oil companies to remove wells that have long since passed peak production.

Under the new oil well ordinance the council adopted this year, a company must abandon a well when its production drops below a minimum level. City officials, however, estimate that the Chevron and Shell wells could continue producing above that level for many years.

It wasn’t until this year that the oil companies finally agreed to a price the city considered acceptable, Sandoval said.

Councilman John Erskine, who was involved in some of the negotiations, said he concluded that “the wells could remain there as long as the companies wanted.”