Lost Hills Oil Field
kern County, California oilfield
The Lost Hills Oil Field is a large oil field in the Lost Hills Range, north of the town of Lost Hills in western Kern County, California, in the United States.
Production
While only the 18th-largest oil field in California in size, in total remaining reserves it ranks sixth, with the equivalent of over 110 million barrels (17,000,000 m3) producible reserves still in the ground, according to the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (Chevron Corp., the principal operator, estimates considerably more oil in the ground). Production at Lost Hills has been increasing steadily: as of the end of 2006, it was California's second fastest-growing oil field, exceeded only by the nearby Cymric Field.
The Lost Hills field also contains considerable reserves of natural gas. In 1998, one of the field's gas wells was the site of a spectacular blowout, producing a pillar of fire which burned for 14 days and was visible more than 40 miles (64 km) away.
Setting
The Lost Hills Field underlies a long, low range of southeast-to-northwest trending hills of the same name adjacent to the San Joaquin Valley. The hills rise scarcely more than 200 feet (61 m) above the San Joaquin Valley to the east, and only 100 feet (30 m) or less above the Antelope Plain to the west; in places they are almost flat. The hills and associated oil field are between Interstate 5 to the east and State Route 33 to the west, both of which parallel the field; Interstate 5 runs about 4 miles (6.4 km) away and Route 33 about 7 miles (11 km). The California Aqueduct runs adjacent to the field boundary on the northeast, and the town of Lost Hills is on the other side of the aqueduct along California State Route 46, which passes through the field from east to west.
The climate in the Lost Hills area is arid to semi-arid, with an average rainfall of 5 to 6 inches (130 to 150 mm) a year, almost all in the winter months.
“Lost Hills Oil Field” enters the record as kern County, California oilfield. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lost, Hills and Field can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12061377. Authority coordinates are 35.616, -119.725. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lost Hills Oil Field” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.