Pasadena Star News: Whittier area rich in oil history

By Airan Scruby, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 03/15/2008 10:06:01 PM PDT

Timeline of drilling in Whittier

WHITTIER – There’s oil in those hills, and for the first time since 1992, oil wells and holding tanks may again dot the landscape.

Last week, city officials announced plans to explore drilling in the Whittier Hills using more environmentally friendly methods.

“The oil market is approaching $100 a barrel,” Matrix Oil Corp. Vice President Mike McCaskey said Friday. “We think it’s a viable project on a test basis.”

The Whittier Hills have been the source of black gold since the 1890s, but weak oil prices and stringent rules on drilling pushed the industry from the area in the early 1990s.

In 1995, Whittier bought more than 1,200 acres from Chevron Corp. and Unocal with county Proposition A money, and the land was reclaimed by nature after hundreds of oil derricks were removed.

“The environment is starting to spring back,” City Manager Steve Helvey said. “You wouldn’t go up there and say `Oh, this is an oil field.”‘

It could soon become one again, although city officials say it would not resemble past oil projects in the Whittier Hills, when as many as 500 derricks dotted the area.

Using advanced technology, the new wells would use less environmentally invasive methods of extracting oil, City Councilman Bob Henderson said last week.

Because the land is city-owned, Whittier would gain thousands or even millions of dollars a year through royalties for allowing the drilling.

Oil shaped development in

Whittier and the surrounding area when a rush for the commodity between 1890 and 1920 helped industrialize Southern California.

Candace Holley, collections manager for the Whittier Museum, said the oil industry helped to make the city what it is today.

Now, much of the land that had been covered by derricks is preserved as open space.

The Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Authority manages 3,860 acres in the hills, of which Whittier’s acreage is a part.

The land is used for low-impact recreation like hiking and biking, and the oil derricks that once stood have largely been removed.

Oil was discovered in the Whittier and Puente hills in 1884, according to “Black Gold in the Golden State: The Rise of Oil in the Development of the Puente Hills,” written by Michael T. Keating for the Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Authority.

According to Keating, the lucky discoverer was Billy Rowland, who found the valuable substance on his father’s ranch. He eventually formed the Puente Oil Co. in 1886 with backing from Los Angeles businessmen.

More than a dozen companies flocked to the area, including Central Oil Co. and Home Oil Co., both run mostly by Whittier entrepreneurs, according to Whittier Museum archives.

Some companies pumped just a few barrels of oil per day and many were unstable, cannibalizing one another, merging and dividing through the 1920s.

According to the California Department of Conservation, Shell Oil brought corporate structure to the oil fields when it drilled its first Whittier well in 1918.

Other major groups came to the area within a few years, and, in 1942, Home Oil Co., founded in 1897, closed its doors. Other similar companies had already sold out to larger ones or shut down for lack of accessible oil.

For decades, hundreds of derricks in the Whittier Hills continued to quietly pump oil while mounting resistance grew from below.

In 1971, “Prevent Residential Oil Drilling,” or PROD, was founded in response to attempts to drill a new well in a populated Whittier neighborhood.

PROD’s efforts didn’t stop the well from being installed in 1976 on Honolulu Terrace Drive by Seaboard Oil and Gas Co., a company associated with Pat O’Melia, a former Whittier mayor.

That well changed hands in 2001, sold to Matrix Oil Corp. A 2005 explosion in which a worker died prompted investigations and community outrage. Residents formed a homeowners association to lobby for change, and Matrix agreed to add safety elements and eliminate noise and smells.

“It creates a fire hazard,” resident Donna Hollander said. “It doesn’t matter how much they do to mitigate it. It’s not easy to live with.”

At about $14 per barrel in the late 1980s, Chevron Corp. and Unocal found the oil wasn’t worth the cost of drilling.

After the city bought the land in 1995 with the intention of preserving it as open space, 1,280 acres sat empty until Santa Barbara-based Matrix approached the city about the possibility of drilling there. Matrix has operated about 20 wells on Honolulu Terrace Drive since 2001.

This new drilling in the hills could mean a comeback for the oil industry in Whittier, with a portion of the profits going directly to the city’s general fund.

McCaskey said Matrix expects to spend up to $2 million to drill its first test well after environmental studies are completed.

“(New wells are) really different in regards to their relationship to residences,” Helvey said. “Nobody would be able to see it, nobody would be able to hear it.”

“It did change the growth of the city,” Holley said. “The Hoover Hotel was built for oil workers.”

Although crude pushed industrialization on the region in the early 20th century, it also stopped the growth of suburban sprawl, as many housing developments and city centers avoided the oil fields because of noise, smell and fire danger.

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