The Mountain View field underlies the town of Arvin and the farmland around it, in the southeastern corner of the San Joaquin Valley southeast of Bakersfield. Hogan Petroleum discovered it in May 1933 with a 3,200-barrel-a-day well in the Wharton pool of the Santa Margarita Formation at about 5,500 feet. More than 90 million barrels have come out since. Today Mountain View is one of the most fragmented fields in California, worked by more than twenty separate independents, which makes its royalties unusually operator-specific.
Hogan Petroleum brought in the Mountain View discovery in May 1933, hitting the Wharton pool in the Santa Margarita Formation at roughly 5,500 feet with a well that flowed 3,200 barrels a day. In the depths of the Depression that was a substantial strike, and it drew operators to a part of Kern County that had been farmed rather than drilled. Subsequent drilling found pay across a remarkable stratigraphic range, and the field grew as a collection of separate pools rather than as a single reservoir.
Because Arvin and neighboring communities sit on top of parts of the field, operators used slant drilling to reach reservoirs beneath the town from surface locations outside it — an early example of the surface-use compromises that now shape oil work across urban and semi-urban California. Agriculture and oil have coexisted here for ninety years, with pumping units set among orchards and row crops, and mineral ownership frequently severed from the farm ground above it generations ago.
By 2008 the field produced about 437 barrels a day in total, averaging roughly 2.5 barrels per well with about 81 percent water cut — deep stripper territory. By 2009 twenty-three separate independent companies operated at Mountain View, with Atlantic Oil Company the largest at 49 producing wells and Sunray Petroleum running 22. No major oil company remained. That degree of fragmentation is unusual even among mature California fields, and it means almost any question about a Mountain View interest begins with identifying the specific operator.
Mountain View sits at the southeastern corner of the San Joaquin Basin, where the sedimentary section wedges out against Jurassic schist basement. Pay is spread across an exceptional stratigraphic range: the Miocene Santa Margarita, which hosts the discovery Wharton pool at about 5,500 feet, the Oligocene Walker, the Pliocene to Miocene Chanac, the Pleistocene Kern River beds, and the fractured basement itself. Each pool has its own drive, depth, and crude quality, which is a large part of why the field ended up divided among so many small operators.
Mountain View is not a major enhanced-recovery field in the way its steam-flooded neighbors are. With production spread thinly across two dozen operators and multiple stratigraphic pools, there has been no single field-wide injection program of the kind that transformed Mount Poso or Kern River. What the field has instead is longevity through low-cost operation: shallow to moderate depths, simple pumping units, and slant wells that reach beneath Arvin from outside it. Water cut near 81 percent is now the practical limit on well life.
Mountain View royalties are the definition of stripper income: about 2.5 barrels per well per day, high water cut, and two dozen small operators whose individual decisions determine whether a given lease stays online. Field statistics tell you almost nothing about a specific tract here, so valuation has to be built lease by lease from the actual payor and recent volumes. Many owners find the administrative effort exceeds the income. We buy minerals and royalties in Kern County and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
The field is a set of separate pools spanning a wide stratigraphic range rather than one large reservoir, and per-well rates are low enough that majors left long ago. By 2009 twenty-three independent companies operated there, the largest running fewer than fifty wells.
Parts of the field lie beneath Arvin and nearby communities, and operators have long used slant drilling to reach those reservoirs from surface locations outside the developed area. The wells are directional, not vertical, under the town itself.
That depends on your decimal and your circumstances. Small interests in high-water-cut fields often generate checks that barely justify the paperwork, and their value is sensitive to a single operator’s decisions. A free written offer lets you compare a certain amount today against that stream.