Elk Hills Oil Field

1) is a large oil field in western Kern County, in the Elk Hills of the San Joaquin Valley, California in the United States, about 20 miles (32 km) west of Bakersfield.

Two guarded gates to the California Resources Corporation operations, 3 and 4, make up the intersection with Skyline Road on the summit of the range.

Thirteen separate oil pools have been identified so far in the Elk Hills Field, in rock units ranging in age from Oligocene to Pleistocene.

The dusty Elk Hills have a prominent role in U.S. political history, for it was the lease of this land by Secretary of the Interior Albert B.

Fall, to Pan American Petroleum in 1922 in return for personal loans at no interest, that brought on the Teapot Dome scandal which ruined the reputation of the administration of Warren G. Harding, now commonly considered to be one of the most corrupt in U.S. history.

[7] NPR-1, operated by Williams Brothers Engineering Company, reached peak production in 1981, pumping 42 million barrels (6,700 cubic decametres) of oil out of the Stevens Pool in that year alone.

A drive to privatize some government lands during the mid-1990s succeeded in 1997 with the sale of the reserve to Occidental Petroleum, the highest bidder.

Although Occidental declined to divulge the location, state records show that Occidental has been drilling wells to depths of 10 to 12 thousand feet (3,000 to 3,700 m) at the northwest end of Elk Hills Field, between Elk Hills and Railroad Gap Field.