Ventura Avenue Oil Field, Ventura County, California

Abstract The Ventura Avenue oil field is located in Ventura County, California, 2 ¼ miles north of the city of Ventura, in the Ventura River valley. This field has the reputationof being the most difficult field in California in which to complete a deep well. The topography of the field is very rough, embracing elevations from 100 to 1,100 feet. The Ventura anticline is 16 miles long with Ventura Avenue field at the center. The anti-cline plunges in both directions from the center of the field and is characterized bysteep dips on the flanks, which range from 300 to 600;. Production comes from the Picoformation, of lower Pliocene age. The field has six oil zones, but practically all production comes from the deepest zone, the Lloyd. The Lloyd zone has a known thickness of 2,600 feet, with the bottom of the zone as yet not found. The Ventura Avenue fieldhas at present [February, 1928] a production of 57,000 barrels per day of 20° so gravity oil, from 113 wells. The field has produced, since its discovery in 1915, up toJanuary 1, 1928, approximately 44,000,000 barrels of oil and more than 130,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas, yielding approximately 1 gallon of gasoline per 1,000 cubic feet of gas, and should ultimately produce 250,000,000 barrels of oil and 600,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas.