Efforts Underway to Cap and Map Summerland’s Abandoned Oil Wells

For decades, Summerland Beach has suffered from a sticky plague: the constant seepage of oil from over 200 offshore wellheads, tracing back to the origins of the world’s first offshore oil wells in the 1890s. Despite lying abandoned for over 80 years, these wells continue to inflict their toll, leaving their mark on anyone who has strolled the coastline barefoot, the telltale tar sticking to their soles.

However, efforts are underway to permanently cap these wells and prevent further leaks. On Monday, the process of “re-abandonment” began for Treadwell Pier oil wells 1 & 5, managed by offshore engineering team 2H Offshore, with assistance for permits from Beacon-West Energy Group. The Curtin Maritime barge departed from Long Beach and headed to Summerland on Sunday, arriving Monday morning to begin the capping process.

Efforts to cap the two Treadwell Pier oil wells coincides with the initiation of an ambitious geologic study of the ocean floor off Summerland, spearheaded by environmental nonprofit Heal the Ocean (HTO). 

The nonprofit, with help from its donors, has contracted Bubbleology Research International (BRI), whose principal investigator, Dr. Ira Leifer, will lead the Summerland Oil Mitigation Study (SOMS). They’re looking to analyze the ocean floor beneath the leaking oil wells, with an eye to securing additional funding for new technology for more efficient well-capping.

Funding for the project comes from the 2017 Senate Bill 44 (Hannah-Beth Jackson) Legacy Well Re-Abandonment program, which annually allocates $2 million to cap leaking oil wells along the California coast. The work began in 2018 with the successful re-abandonment of Becker #1 at Summerland Beach. 

“Back in 2016, there was a bunch of oil on Miramar Beach. We used a drone to follow where it was coming from,” recounted HTO Consultant and Program Director Harry Rabin. “That led us to the whole mess at Summerland. Since then, we’ve been plugging wellheads.”

Anticipating a cost of roughly $2 million and a completion time of 10 to 12 days, the capping process for Treadwell 1 & 5 is now in motion, making them the sixth and seventh wells capped under the California State Lands Commission’s (CSLC) guidance. The process is called “re-abandonment” because they re-cap leaky wellheads that were once abandoned but not properly plugged.

With more than 200 “straws,” as Rabin described them, sipping from the same shallow pool of oil, the wells stopped producing a meaningful profit in the 1930s-1940s. So the wildcatters abandoned them and plugged them in the cheapest manner possible — clothing, rags, and wood were crudely stuffed into the wells with the idea that it would actually seal them off. 

Unsurprisingly, that did not work.

In 1968, according to Rabin, State Lands hired someone to pump around 60 identified wells full of concrete and liquid dynamite to blow them up. That capping method lasted until around 2015, Rabin said, but the concrete has degraded. Approximately 30 percent of previously capped wellheads have sprung leaks, becoming the focus of re-abandonment efforts. According to State Land’s research, there are roughly 200 high-priority legacy oil and gas wells that could leak oil into the marine environment.

“Lord knows what the remaining ones were plugged with,” Rabin said. “Fortunately, a lot of those are holding, surprisingly.”

State Lands, 2H Offshore, and other partners developed ways of attacking the leaks while keeping the oil contained. Using a giant cofferdam, which envelops the wellhead, they’re able to contain and skim off any oil that naturally floats to the top and avoid any free-flowing spillage into the ocean. 

The process of entombing the leaking wells from there involves a barge, divers, and other heavy equipment. They put a big steel tube around the well, drive it into a layer of impermeable “blue clay,” fill it with concrete, and weld it shut.  

“I think if the world got hit by an asteroid, these giant metal pipes would survive,” Rabin said. 

Five legacy wells have been capped since 2018 as part of State Land’s broader efforts to prevent oil seepage into surrounding waters and onto the beach. “Aerial photos taken after the work show a visibly clear ocean,” the commission said in December 2020 after capping two Summerland offshore wells. 

However, HTO suspects that when one well is capped, the oil is redirected to the next path of least resistance. To put the theory in simpler terms, “If you put a cork in it, it’s gonna go elsewhere,” Rabin said.

Enter the geologic survey. Dr. Leifer’s study aims to identify patterns and links between wells and recurring seepage locations to determine a more efficient approach to re-abandonment and make sure that when one well is capped, the oil is not resurfacing somewhere else down the line. The goal is to paint a picture of the landscape, including what’s underneath the sand and nearshore, to better understand the oil flows, alongside monitoring the wells as required for SB 44 funding.

Heal the Ocean has a history of similar initiatives, such as mapping beach cleanups and boat wrecks on Google Earth. To case out the wells, Rabin will operate HTO’s new Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) to survey the ocean floor and pinpoint the location of submerged wellheads. 

“We’re only capping one or two a year, and we’re not going to get anywhere at that rate,” Rabin said. “And it costs too much. It’s roughly a million dollars to plug each one.”

Heal the Ocean Executive Director Hillary Hauser said that SOMS will have multiple benefits beyond its use as an accessible, interactive map for State Lands. She said it’ll aid in budget discussions, potentially securing an extension for SB 44 or a new funding source, as well as support HTO’s advocacy for streamlined cleanup efforts. The goal is to increase funding from SB 44 to $3 million per year so they may potentially afford a mobile, jack-up drilling rig, capable of capping multiple wells at a reduced cost and in a shorter time frame.

“Eventually, we will get them all,” Rabin said. However, they won’t only be scoping out the ocean floor, but the land, too. Rabin fears the possibility of discovering wellheads even beneath people’s homes. “They’re everywhere,” he added.

The good news for HTO is that State Lands has agreed to review the SOMS study upon its completion. In addition, Leifer and Rabin have co-authored a paper/abstract that has been accepted for accreditation and peer review by the American Geophysical Union. 

Even if (when) the wells are all capped, there will still be oil leakage through natural seeps, but nature will have the capacity to take care of it on its own, Rabin said. Humanity’s oil pollution from centuries-old wells has overburdened the environment. As Rabin puts it, “That’s the problem when you put that many holes through the Earth into a pool of oil.”