Lompoc Oil Field

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 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.

Climate in the region is Mediterranean, with cool, rainy winters and dry summers during which the heat is greatly diminished by fog and northwesterly winds from the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean, which is about 12 miles (19 km) west of the field.

Drainage on the south side of the hills is to the Santa Ynez River, and then out to the sea via Lompoc; to the north, runoff goes to San Antonio Creek, which exits to the ocean through Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Beneath this unit, and separated by an unconformity, is the oil-bearing rock, the fractured shale of the Miocene-age Monterey Formation, at the top of which oil has pooled, halted in its upward migration by the impermeable cap of the Sisquoc.

An enhanced recovery project – gas injection to increase reservoir pressure – which had commenced in 1929 was discontinued in 1960, and production from the field continued to decline.

As part of a deal with various environmental groups, including the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center and Get Oil Out!, both venerable opponents of the oil industry in California, Plains offered to decommission the entire Lompoc Field in 2022, donating it as a permanent public nature preserve, in return for being able to slant drill from its existing Platform Irene in Federal waters into the previously untapped Tranquillon Ridge field, in state waters close to shore.

Platform Irene, the Lompoc Field, and the Processing Plant would be shut down by 2022, and in the meantime the state would have received approximately $2 billion in tax revenues, while Santa Barbara County would have gotten $350 million.

The deal was defeated by a 2-1 vote of the State Lands Commission on January 29, 2009, who cited the unenforceability of the sunset clause.

[14][15] Freeport McMoRan Oil and Gas acquired the operations in the field with their 2013 purchase of Plains Exploration & Production

Location of the Lompoc Oil Field in southern and central California. Other oil fields are shown in dark gray.
Detail of the Lompoc field, showing Vandenberg Village to the south and the Los Alamos Valley to the north.
Lompoc Oil Field Structure Map
View from Harris Grade Road within the Lompoc Oil Field, south towards Vandenberg Village. The two storage tanks in the middle distance are on the field.
A solitary Plains pumpjack on the Lompoc field. Under the terms of the Tranquillon Ridge deal, this and the adjacent area would be converted to protected open space, effectively increasing the area of the Burton Mesa Ecological Reserve, the wooded area in the background, by 3,700 acres.