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THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



THE SANTA MARIA OIL FIELDS. 



BY A. T. TAYLOR. 



Nestling among trees and flowers near the hills of the 

 Coast Range in Santa Barbara County, California, is one 

 of the busiest and prettiest little towns on the Pacific Coast 

 Santa Maria. 



North, east and south of the town, the mountains rise 

 as if by nature's wise provision, guarding from the winds 

 and forming an unfailing watershed for the tender vegeta- 

 tion in the valley below. A girdle of green embraces the 

 town and from every point of view an inspiring landscape 

 meets the eye. It is the principal distributing point for, and 

 is encircled by, what are probably destined to become the 

 greatest oil fields the world has ever known, and back of 

 all this it has the wealth of productiveness of the Santa 

 Maria Valley. Yet with its wonderful advantages and its 

 exceptional charm of climate, its people have made no partic- 

 ular effort toward inviting the outside world to share in 

 their beneficence. Therefore, it has been only since the dis- 

 covery of its vast oil deposits that the town and valley have 

 begun to expand and prosper in proportion to their merits. 

 Judging from the thousands of people who are coming to 

 California every year in quest of home, health and invest- 

 ment, it may not be optimistic to predict that here within 

 the next few years will rise one of the greatest common- 

 wealths of the West. 



Santa Maria has just begun to dress up, in other words, 

 she is taking on the appearance of a city in the bud. There 

 is no other town of its size in the state today that can boast 

 of so many modern business structures. Three banks, two 

 of which are built respectively of sand lime and terra cotta 

 bricks, would be architectural adornments to any city, and 

 its handsome public schools are evidences of the civic pride 

 of her citizens. It has a good commercial hotel, a number 

 of hotels which are run upon the European plan, several 

 good restaurants, a splendid water system, an efficient 

 electric lighting plant, a modern up-to-date electric railway 

 connecting the town with Guadalupe, a station on the coast 

 line of the Southern Pacific System. 



It needs but a glance at the display windows of any of 

 the stores to convince one that her merchants are "live ones" 

 in everything that the term implies. Its streets are broad 

 and well oiled, and the life and bustle upon them, the in- 

 cessant oil talk and the "no time to lose" spirit is so forcibly 

 impressed upon the mind of the visitor, that his sleep is 

 likely to be disturbed by visions of derricks, oil wells and 

 gushers. 



The Santa Maria Valley, from which the town takes 

 its name, is really prodigal in its diversified products. While 

 sugar beets, beans and barley predominate, it produces an 

 abundance of fruits, vegetables, and, besides the one men- 

 tioned, many other kinds of cereals. The Union Sugar 

 Company has a large refinery at Betteravia with an approxi- 

 mate output of 300,000 sacks of sugar annually. 



As this is but one of a series of articles upon the Santa 

 Maria Valley which will be published in THE IRRIGATION AGE, 

 greater details of its soil products will be given in a future 

 number, therefore the remainder of this article will be de- 

 voted to the oil situation, in which many irrigation farmers 

 are interested. 



The oil development while yet in its infancy records the 

 most phenomenal results produced in the West. The present 

 yield is upwards of nine hundred thousand barrels per month, 

 and the very near future will mark the enormous production 

 of over one million barrels. Recent drillings have shown 

 fuel oils in the eastern part of the valley and immense 

 quantities of light oil in the main fields. In oil parlance, 

 the wells are known as the "deep well" type, the oil sand 

 being very thick, which is an indisputable evidence of the 

 permanency of the wells. 



The nresent demand for the product is so great that 

 storage reserves are unnecessary. As an evidence of this 

 fact a contract has been made by one of the companies in 

 the field with Japan for the delivery of two million barrels 

 per annum. 



The Union Oil Company is the largest producer. It 

 has one six-inch and one eight-inch pipe line conveying oil 

 to Port Harford, at tidewater, a distance of thirrv-five miles 



Here it has its own tank steamers and commands shipping 

 facilities to different parts of the coast and abroad. 



The Standard Oil Company while not a producer in this 

 field is a purchaser from several of tbe operating companies 

 and gravitates or pumps its oil through an eight-inch pipe 

 line from the fields near Orcutt to Port Harford into its line 

 of tank steamers. It has a contract for one and one-half 

 million barrels annually for three years at advanced prices 

 over former contracts with the Final and Brookshire Com- 

 panies, and it has also a smaller contract with the Pennsyl- 

 vania Company. Together with the Associated Oil Com- 

 pany, the Standard has a contract with the Western Union 

 Oil Company for an extended period for the delivery of 

 two million barrels yearly. 



The Associated Oil Company has an eight-inch pipe line 

 from the field in a southerly direction to Gaviota, on the 

 Santa Barbara Channel. 



The Graciosa Oil Company has a pipe line in con- 

 nection with Casmalia, a station on the Southern Pacific 

 Railway. It also has a large refining plant at Oil Port on 

 Port Harford Bay which is known as the California Oil 

 Refineries Company, Limited. 



The Brookshire and Final Companies have a pipe line 

 to the Union Sugar Company's plant at Betteravia, which 

 also connects them with the Southern Pacific cars. 



Several companies have pipe lines connecting them with 

 the narrow gauge railroad which runs to San Luis Obispo 

 and Port Harford. 



Over two hundred miles of pipe lines convey the oil 

 in every direction, ninety-five per cent of which have direct 

 connection with tidewater, making the field practically in- 

 dependent of railroad transportation, a feature so objection- 

 able to the fields of the Standard Oil Company. 



The Union Oil Company has a contract for delivering 

 oil to the Panama Canal Company and has laid a pipe line 

 across the Isthmus for shipping oil to points on the At- 

 lantic seaboard, whenever there is a demand and there is 

 sufficient oil to spare. Much credit is due the Union Oil 

 Company for this stroke of enterprise, for it was during the 

 years of 1905 and 1906 when the Standard Oil Company 

 had so depressed the prices throughout the state by their 

 large storage holdings in the San Joaquin fields, that the 

 operating companies in the Santa Maria fields were com- 

 pelled to cap their surplus wells to avoid the necessity of 

 storing their excess product and accepting low prices, that 

 this masterly stroke was accomplished, which caused the 

 Standard to sit up and take notice of its rival in the West. 

 The Union Oil Company has a small but effective refining 

 plant near Port Harford, the bulk of its product, however, is 

 refined at Oleum, on San Francisco Bay. The great thirty- 

 five hundred barrel per day gusher is the property of this 

 company, and after five months of continuous flow it still 

 maintains these remarkable figures. The gravity of the oil 

 from this well is twenty-six degrees. 



The average gravity of the oils of the Santa Maria 

 fields range from twenty-three to twenty-seven degrees ex- 

 cept in a few shallow wells where it is heavier. J. F. Good- 

 win, superintendent of the Final and Dome Oil Companies, 

 has had several tests made of the twenty-five and twenty- 

 seven gravity oils and there are no wells known where the 

 oils are freer from impurities with an asphalt base. The 

 Graciosa Company's wells are of about the same gravity. 



Upon first distillation six grades of oil are obtained 

 besides gasoline and distillates : two grades of kerosene, 

 benzine, naphtha, engine oil and the residue which is still an 

 eighteen gravity ideal fuel oil. A very large percentage of 

 the distillable product is gasoline. By further distillation 

 other valuable products are obtained and a still heavier fuel 

 oil is left. 



Within the last year a great deal of attention has been 

 centered on the eastern Santa Maria field, especially since 

 the Palmer Oil Company brought in a well penetrating a 

 similar oil formation to that of the main field, with even a 

 greater depth of oil bearing sand. It is putting down 

 another test well two and a quarter miles due east of 

 Palmer well number one on the Stendel-Triplett lease and 

 they have passed through over three hundred and fifty feet 

 of rich oil sand. They are now at a depth, of twenty-two 

 hundred feet which proves the productiveness of the field 

 beyond a doubt. The depth of Palmer well number one is 

 thirty-one hundred and fifty feet and it shows over twelve 



