Coalinga Oil Field

It surrounds the town of Coalinga, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, to the west of Interstate 5, at the foot of the Diablo Range.

Compared to many of the other California oil fields, Coalinga is large and spread out, but contains a few areas of concentrated development around the richer pools.

The field has a rough semicircular shape open to the southeast, approximately twelve miles long by six across, with the town of Coalinga at the southwestern limit of the semicircle, and the agricultural Pleasant Valley inside.

Most of the oil in the Coalinga field comes from a large-scale geologic formation known as the Kregenhagan-Temblor petroleum system, a body of Eocene-age shales rich in organic sediments.

On the east side of the field, along Anticline Ridge, the huge Temblor pool of Miocene age, at depths of 700 to 4,600 feet (1,400 m), produced an enormous amount of oil in the early 20th century, and is now mostly exhausted.

[5] Oil was known in the Coalinga area long before the arrival of Europeans, as the Native Americans in the region used the tarry substance from natural seeps as lining for baskets, as well as for trade.

The "Blue Goose" well, drilled by the Home Oil Company to a depth 1,400 feet (430 m), erupted in 1898, spewing over 1,000 barrels per day (160 m3/d).

According to an article published in the New York Times in 1905, Standard attempted to force its competitors out of business by artificially holding down the price of oil to as little as ten cents a barrel.