Lompoc Oil Field
The Lompoc Oil Field is a large oil field in the Purisima Hills north of Lompoc, California, in Santa Barbara County. Discovered in 1903, two years after the discovery of the Orcutt Oil Field in the Solomon Hills, it is one of the oldest oil fields in northern Santa Barbara County, and one of the closest to exhaustion, reporting only 1.7 million barrels (270,000 m3) of recoverable oil remaining out of its original 50 million barrels (7,900,000 m3) as of the end of 2008. Its sole operator as of 2016 was Freeport McMoRan Oil and Gas, who acquired it with their 2013 purchase of Plains Exploration & Production. In 2009, the proposed decommissioning and habitat restoration of the 3,700-acre (15 km2) field was part of a controversial and so-far unsuccessful deal between Plains, several environmental groups, Santa Barbara County, and the State of California, to allow Plains to carry out new offshore oil drilling on the Tranquillon Ridge, in the Pacific Ocean about twenty miles (32 km) southwest of the Lompoc field.
The Lompoc field follows the line of the Purisima Hills, a northwest-to-southeast trending range dividing the Santa Ynez Valley on the south from the Los Alamos Valley to the north, and the field is about five miles (8 km) long by one-half to one mile (1.6 km) across. The hills are a part of the Burton Mesa region, much of which is an ecological reserve maintained by the California Department of Fish and Game. Populated places close to the field include Vandenberg Village and Lompoc to the south, Vandenberg Air Force Base to the west, and Los Alamos to the east. One public road, Harris Grade Road, traverses the field from north to south. Several access points to the field are along this road. Most of the field's productive area, and most of the oil wells, are on the southern slope of the hills. Elevations on the oil field range from around 400 feet (120 m) on the west to 1,242 feet (379 m) at the summit of the Purisima Hills.
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