Oil in Beverly Hills `Humming'  

Bloomberg has an interesting little piece on oil fields within the Los Angeles area.

The rising price of oil, which hit a record $142.99 a barrel today, has sent exploration companies scurrying to squeeze additional supplies from the fields underlying Los Angeles and its celebrity-rich neighbor.

California, the fourth-biggest U.S. producer of crude, behind Louisiana, Texas and Alaska, has received 16 percent more notices from owners planning to rework old wells this year, while plans to drill new ones are up 23 percent from 12 months ago, according to state Department of Conservation data.

``In the Middle East you might have 300 barrels of oil per cubic acre, but in the Los Angeles Basin you might have 4,000 barrels per cubic acre,'' says Mike Edwards, vice president of Denver-based Venoco Inc., which has 24 active wells in the Beverly Hills area, including one alongside Beverly Hills High School. ``In terms of the land that produces oil, the basin is very rich.'' ...

Production is forecast to ``to stay flat'' in 2008, he said. ``Like everywhere else in the world, there's a lot of increased activity here. As the price of oil rises, it's more economical to produce.''

California has 3 billion recoverable barrels, according to the conservation department. That's equivalent to 4 percent of North American proved oil reserves as measured by BP Plc's Statistical Review of World Energy 2008. Almost 8 percent of the state's onshore output in 2007 came from the Los Angeles Basin, which Bopp described as the most- densely populated oil-producing region of the world.

About 30,000 wells have been drilled since oil production began in the Los Angeles basin more than 130 years ago, producing 8.6 billion barrels from active wells, according to the department.