Oil Gas Bureau of Land Management Blm Form

Instructions and help about Oil Gas Bureau Of Land Management Blm

Nearly 120 years ago, a chance discovery in the San Joaquin Valley would change the course of California’s history forever – oil. From the first hand-dug well, 70-feet deep to today’s steam and thermal-enhanced extraction technologies, hundreds of land-lease holders now extract millions of barrels of oil from these public lands each year. Oil and gas has been around here since the late 1800’s. In fact, before that, there were natural oil seeps that Chumash Indians used to waterproof their canoes. It was probably in the late 1800’s that they started commercially increasing oil production and actually selling it. They even dug for the oil in pits. Then after a while they figured out a way to get it out by drilling a well and by the turn of the century things were going pretty strong here. They had hundreds, even thousands, of wells in the area by the early 1900’s. Initially, they used wooden derricks and then they moved on to steel derricks and then after that they came up wi