Elk Hills Reserve Oil Well Breaks State Drilling Record at 22,735 Feet
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An oil-drilling crew at the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve near Bakersfield claimed a new California record Friday when its drilling bit reached a depth of 22,735 feet, surpassing by 24 feet the mark set by Tenneco Oil Co. in 1976 elsewhere in Kern County.
Drilling was to continue toward the 25,000-foot level, a target that will probably be reached in late July, said Elk Hills director Robert Weller. Drilling began about two years ago on the project, which is funded and administered by the Energy Department.
The hole is the last of three deep wells originally proposed by U.S. government geologists in the mid-1970s to test a long-standing suspicion by geologists that a major new reservoir of natural gas underlies the huge oil fields at Elk Hills.
Weller said there were “shows,” or signs of hydrocarbons, at the 14,000, 17,000 and 21,000-foot levels. He called the results “interesting” but inconclusive. The average oil well is about 4,400 feet deep.
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