![]() Location of Honor Rancho Oil Field and Gas Storage Facility in southern California
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Country | United States |
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Location | Los Angeles County, California |
Offshore/onshore | onshore |
Operators | Southern California Gas Company, Vintage Production, LLC. |
Field history | |
Discovery | 1950 |
Start of development | 1950 |
Start of production | 1950 |
Peak year | 1957 |
Production | |
Current production of oil | 138 barrels per day (~6,880 t/a) |
Year of current production of oil | 2014 |
Estimated oil in place | 1.352 million barrels (~1.844×10 5 t) |
Producing formations | Modelo Formation |
The Honor Rancho Oil Field (also Honor Rancho Natural Gas Storage Field, Honor Rancho Underground Storage Facility) is an approximately 600-acre oil field and natural gas storage facility in Los Angeles County, California, in the foothills north of Valencia, near the junction of Interstate 5 and westbound California State Route 126. Discovered in 1950 and quickly developed, the field's oil production peaked in the 1950s, but remains productive in 2016. In 1975 Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas), the gas utility serving Southern California, began using one of its depleted oil producing zones, the Wayside 13 zone, as a gas storage reservoir, and it became the second-largest in their inventory after the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility. The field shares part of its extent with the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center, which includes a maximum-security prison.
The only operators on the field as of 2016 were SoCalGas and Vintage Production California, LLC, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum. The field produced approximately 50,000 barrels of oil in 2014, and the capacity of the gas storage reservoir is about 26 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Forty gas injection wells tap into the reservoir.
Honor Rancho is in the hills north of the junction if Interstate 5 and westbound California State Route 126, north-northeast of the confluence of Castaic Creek and the Santa Clara River, adjacent to the Santa Clarita Valley. The town of Castaic is to the northwest, and the cities of Valencia and Newhall are south. Elevation on the oil field ranges from around 1050 to 1450 feet above sea level. Runoff is either to Castaic Creek on the west, or towards the Santa Clara River to the south. Climate in the area is Mediterranean, with warm, dry summers and mild and rainy winters.
Access to the natural gas storage facility from the southeast is from Rye Canyon Road, and access to Vintage Petroleum's operations on the north and west is from Hasley Canyon Road, which also provides access to the prison.