Oil Well Plan Sparks Hope for Big Payoff in Inglewood : Revenue: Despite initial reservations, residents and officials see the project as a way to help the cash-strapped city. Potential lease payments of $15,000 a year for mineral rights appeal to homeowners.

A gusher of support is building for a proposed exploratory oil well in Inglewood’s Morningside Park area.

If oil is found, it could mean millions of dollars in royalties for residents and the city.

“I would be surprised if there are three people against it,” Councilman Jose Fernandez said, speculating on the outcome of a public hearing on the issue slated for Tuesday night.

The council is scheduled to consider whether to uphold or overturn a Planning Commission decision to deny Noble Oil Co. of California a permit to drill the well on the eastern edge of Inglewood Park Cemetery.

When the Planning Commission considered the issue at its Sept. 2 meeting, eight area residents complained about possible environmental impacts from drilling, such as noise and truck traffic.

Since then, however, residents have learned how much money they could earn if a large oil reserve is found under the neighborhood, city officials said. Oil company representatives are talking to residents about leasing the mineral rights to their land--at $15,000 a year, according to some city officials.

“If you’re a retired person . . . and someone told you you could lease your mineral rights for $15,000 a year, you’d be for it,” Fernandez said.

As a result, council members are being inundated with letters from Morningside Park residents asking them to approve the well.

“Oh, heck, I got at least 40 letters,” said Councilman Anthony Scardenzan. “My feeling is if the environment is protected . . . I don’t have any problem with it.”

Fernandez is excited by the idea because the city, which stands to get 22 cents for every barrel of oil pumped out of the ground, could reap “from several hundred thousand dollars to over a million dollars per year for the next 25 years,” according to a Planning Department report urging the council to approve the well.

“That plus the gambling revenues will really boost our city,” said Fernandez, referring to the passage last Tuesday of Proposition E, a city measure that allows for a card club at Hollywood Park Race Track.

The city, caught in a recessionary budget squeeze that has left it with a budget deficit of nearly $6 million this year, is casting about for new revenue.

Councilman Daniel Tabor, who represents the Morningside Park area, said he too is excited by the prospect of new city revenue but is proceeding cautiously on the well permit. He said he is scheduled to meet with the oil firm president, Frank Noble of Pasadena, Tuesday before the meeting.

Tabor said that before he agrees to support the well project he wants to know more about the prospects for oil and also about the environmental impacts on the nearby residential neighborhood. Noble could not be reached for comment.

But city officials said the oil firm has already done extensive testing to determine the prospects for oil. Geologists for the firm, the officials said, believe there is a large oil reserve.

The site for the well would be 7715 S. Victoria Ave., which used to be the 10-acre site of the Children’s Baptist Home. Buildings there were torn down when the land was sold to the cemetery.

The permit, if the council grants it, would be a three-phased special-use permit, the first phase of which would be for a temporary, exploratory well on Victoria Avenue. Under the terms of the permit being recommended by the Planning Department, the drilling rig would be covered with sound-blanketing material.

If oil or gas is discovered, the project would move into the second phase--development of the site, eventually with 50 well heads hidden behind a nine-foot high, decorative wall. The permit calls for all permanent production facilities to be below ground level except for a small office building and a pump house. Small underground oil pipes would link the wells to a larger regional pipe that runs nearby.

“Final phase of the project would be the production phase, which could last 25 years or more depending on the size of the (oil reserve),” said the Planning Department report to the council.