Multiple-well monitoring site adjacent to the Elk Hills Oil Field, Kern County, California

Introduction

The Elk Hills Oil Field is one of the many fields selected for regional groundwater mapping and monitoring by the California State Water Resources Control Board as part of the Oil and Gas Regional Monitoring Program (California State Water Resources Control Board, 2015, 2022b; U.S. Geological Survey, 2022a). The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the California State Water Resources Control Board, is evaluating groundwater resources near areas of oil and gas development in California, including (1) the location of groundwater resources near oil fields; (2) the proximity of oil and gas operations to groundwater, and the geologic materials between them; (3) evidence (or lack of evidence) of fluids from oil and gas sources in groundwater; and (4) the pathways or processes responsible when fluids from oil and gas sources are present in groundwater (U.S. Geological Survey, 2022a). As part of this evaluation, the USGS installed a multiple-well monitoring site near the administrative boundary of the Elk Hills Oil Field in the southern San Joaquin Valley about 6 miles northeast of Taft, California (California Department of Water Resources, 2020; fig. 1). Data collected at the Elk Hills multiple-well monitoring site (ELKH) provide information about the geology, hydrology, geophysical properties, and water quality of the aquifer system, thus enhancing the understanding of relations between adjacent groundwater and the Elk Hills Oil Field in an area where groundwater data are limited, particularly at different depths in the aquifer. This report presents construction information for the ELKH and initial geohydrologic data collected from the site. Similar sites installed on the east side of the Lost Hills Oil Field, on the east side of the North and South Belridge Oil Fields, and within the Poso Creek Oil Field were described by Everett and others (2020a, b, 2023).