San Miguelito Oil Field
The San Miguelito Oil Field is a large and currently productive oil field in the hills northwest of the city of Ventura in southern California in the United States. The field is close to the coastline, with U.S. Highway 101 running past at the base of the hills, and is sandwiched between the larger Ventura Oil Field to the east and the Rincon Oil Field, which is partially offshore, to the north and northwest. Discovered in 1931, and with about 7 million barrels of oil remaining out of its original 125 million, it ranks 44th in the state by size, and at the beginning of 2009 had 61 producing oil wells, all operated by Vintage Production California LLC, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum.
The oil field is one of several following the east-west trend of the Transverse Ranges: to the west is the Rincon Oil Field and the offshore Dos Cuadras field, and to the east the much larger Ventura Oil Field. Total productive area of the field, projected to the surface, encompasses about 940 acres (3.8 km2), about one and a half square miles. On the coast between Ventura and Carpinteria, the stretch known locally as "the Rincon", the hills rise steeply from the shore, with the coastal U.S. Highway 101 occupying much of the narrow strip between the beach and the sharply rising hills. A cluster of seaside homes is on the ocean side of Highway 101 at Solimar Beach (marked as "Dulah" on the USGS topographic map of the area). One of the field's pumpjacks is visible on the mountain side of the highway, at sea level, just north of the Solimar Beach exit; almost all the other oil wells are out of the line of sight from any public road, as are the other oilfield structures (tank farms, processing units, and others).
The predominant vegetation in the hills is chaparral and coastal sage scrub. Terrain on the hills is steep, and the unpaved access roads make numerous switchbacks. Some of the hillsides are bare where landslides have stripped them, and the terrain in this area is unusually prone to landslides.
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