The Seal Beach Oil Field

THE SEAL BEACH oil field is between the Long Beach and Huntington Beach oil fields, south of Los Angeles, and about half the productive area is with-in the city limits of Long Beach. The proved area lies in portions of Sections 2, 3 and 11, T. 5 S., R. 12 W., S. B. B. & M. Seal Beach is 'an additional link in that remarkable chain, of oil fields extending from Newport to Beverly . Hills, filling in one of the few remaining gaps. It differs from other fields along this line of folding in that it is an oil field in an area of tide lands. Ocean-connected sloughs have access to this area, which ac-counts for its extensive mud flats. The surface eleva-tion of the low ground varies from 2 to 5 ft. above sea-level. This condition called for much preliminary work in building roads prior to field development. Roads are constructed with dredges and drag-line scrapers, which excavate mud from alongside the proposed road and pile it up to a grade high enough to be above high tide. The road bed is then surfaced with gravel, or decom-posed granite, which makes it serviceable in all kinds of weather. An immense amount of road material has already been hauled into this field. Well locations are staked in the mud flats, sometimes ahead of road build-ing, and material is dragged to its place on the ground by tractor. It is necessary to drive piling to support derrick foundations. The present practice is to drive 5 piles for each derrick leg, 4 under the rotary table, 2 under the draw-works, 2 under the Samson post and 4 under the pipe rack, a total of 32 piles. This pro-cedure is, of course, varied to suit special conditions, using either more or less piling.