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Kern land to open for drilling
| Tuesday, Aug 15 2006 8:15 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Aug 15 2006 8:19 PM
Oil exploration may soon begin on a large swath of federal land in west Kern County.
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On Sept. 13., the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will auction off oil and gas leases in the former Naval Petroleum Reserve-2 (NPR-2). The leases are on five parcels of land covering 2,533 acres, according to the bureau. The highest bidders can then apply for permits to drill.
The auction is highly anticipated by the oil industry, in part because the land has long been closed to private access.
"I think what's special about these lands now, they've been off-limits to leasing for so long," said Patty Gradek, assistant field manager for minerals at the bureau's Bakersfield office.
Much of NPR-2, located near Taft in the Buena Vista oil field, has been dormant for decades.
"Eighty years have passed since the last round of leasing occurred out there," Gradek said.
The reason for the new round of leasing is that the bureau took over management of NPR-2 from the U.S. Department of Energy.
NPR-2, as the name states, used to be a naval petroleum reserve. The U.S. Navy managed the reserve until 1977, when the Department of Energy took over the job.
The other former petroleum reserve in the area, NPR-1, or Elk Hills, was sold to Occidental Petroleum in 1998.
The Department of Energy and the bureau were in talks to shift management of NPR-2 for five years. The transfer was finally approved a year ago with the passing of the 2005 Energy Act.
NPR-2 consists of 10,500 acres of federal land. Of that, 2,500 acres are not leased -- and that's what the bureau will auction off next month. The rest of NPR-2 -- three-fourths of it -- was already leased for oil and gas production when the bureau took over management.
Immediately after the 2,500 acres were transferred, "the drilling permit (applications) started to roll in," said John Kaiser, a petroleum engineer at the bureau.
It's not known how much oil NPR-2 holds in reserve. One estimate puts it at 600 million barrels. It could hold less.
What is certain is that the land holds considerable interest for the oil industry.
"It's a known field," said Les Clark, vice president of the Independent Oil Producers Agency. "There is potential there."
The field has been producing oil since the early 1900s.
Even if it's not the next Elk Hills or Kern River -- both of which have produced a billion barrels of oil -- opening NPR-2 to new oil and gas leases is considered an employment opportunity, since those new wells will need workers.