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Law, Jan (audio interview #3 of 4)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - Law's third interview was conducted following a tour of "Bixby A Lease." It is in a wetland that, other than the oil production activity, is undeveloped and serves as a wildlife refuge. Law drove Briegel around and showed her birds and other wildlife th 11/4/1983
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- 2021-01-13
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- *** File: subjlaw6.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-3:50)... Brief introduction It's difficult to describe the soft nature of the Wilmington overburden, which did not provide any internal support and resulted in cores pouring out of the core barrel like beach sand. The clay shales also had no resistance. The roughnecks found "wheelbarrow shales." When roughnecks cleaned it off the drill pipe, where it had formed a heavy sheath of mud and clay, they needed 2 wheelbarrows to haul it all away. Below the "wheelbarrow shales" they found "elephant turd" shale that occurred in big lumps and clogged the drill pipe. (3:50-8:17)... There is an interruption in the segment when someone enters the room and speaks to Law. Law was retained by Bechtel to conduct a study entitled, "The Vulnerability to the Off-Shore Desalting Plant...." The desalting site was immediately offshore from Tin Can Beach and the Bolsa Gun Club, and outside the parimeter of the small bowl of subsidence positioned over oil wells offshore from Huntington Beach. His study was an appendix to a larger volume of materials presented to the Atomic Energy Commission, politicians, and interested parties. This study was instrumental in gaining approval for the desalting site. Law used the anatomy of the Wilmington oil field to predict subsidence vulnerability. (8:17-10:45)... U. S. Grant, a descendent of President Ulysses S. Grant, was fascinated with subsidence and worked for the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners for many years as an advisor. In 1956 he wrote, "A Review of Recent Reports on Subsidence," which reviewed various reports on subsidence, including Law's. He also reviewed Law's collar count study, "Interrelationships of Earth Movements in the Long Beach Harbor Area." Law believes Grant's reviews were quite superficial. (10:45-13:40)... The study entitled "Findings of Facts and Orders," written by a state Oil and Gas Supervisor for the Department of Natural Resources, assessed repressuring operations in certain pools and fault blocks of the Wilmington oil field. This study was the basis on which a state law was passed requiring unitization in oil fields where consolidation and subsidence exists. Law compares unitization being imposed on oil well operators to collectivized farming being forced on Russian kulaks . (13:40-23:28)... In 1957, the Long Beach Harbor Department, Petroleum Division published "Summary of Down Hole Casing Joint Measures Since 1950," which picked up where Law left off in his collar counts of 26 oil wells up to 1950. Law discusses various schematic diagrams and the collar count methods that were used to measure subsidence. The collar count measurements were not always accurate, nor was the device that was used to make the measurements. Geologists used the term friable to mean something one can crumble with one's fingers and sucroidal to describe something that can be poured like sugar. In Wilmington, the overburden was sucroidal and beneath it, the tar, ranger, and upper terminal zones, which gave birth to consolidation, were friable. (23:28-26:22)... In 1971, Law was hired by Signal Properties to prepare a study on the future projections of subsidence on two thousand acres of land Signal purchased from the Bolsa Gun Club. In this area, the bowl of subsidence was located over an offshore area and extended into the Bolsa property. The same reasoning used in his study for Bechtel and the Atomic Energy Commission was applied to the newer study, which was entitled "An Estimate of Future Subsidence, Bolsa Property, Huntington Beach." The projections in this report proved to be correct. (26:22-29:47)... The Design and Construction Division of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power conducted a study of the steam plants in the harbor and in Seal Beach. During the 1933 earthquake, the smokestacks were knocked off the Seal Beach steam plant. The authors of the study, A. L. Williams and J. B.. Laughlin, were not affected by the glamorized view of subsidence as a cataclysmic event. (29:47-30:25)... The Baldwin Hills Reservoir failed, Law believes, because there was a small bowl of subsidence in the Inglewood oil field. Standard Oil and other oil producers agreed to pay $12 or $13 million for the homes that were lost when the reservoir failed. End of tape *** File: subjlaw7.mp3 (0:00-2:11)... In 1970, the prestigious consulting firm of Manson & Burns was hired by the City of Los Angeles to evaluate a bowl of subsidence in Beverly Hills as a result of an oil field that was exploited there. Two engineering consultants conducted a survey of the area using the methods established at Wilmington. (2:11-4:53)... Among the things Law is donating to CSULB library is a large packet of correspondence with the Long Beach Water Department. Long Beach had water wells that produced sulfur water. Most of these wells were located on the north and northeast flanks of Signal Hill. The correspondence is related to the argument that heavy withdrawals of water from the Gaspar Aquifer caused subsidence. (4:53-6:30)... Whenever Edison Company installed a steam plant in the area, Law provided them with a report about the possibility of subsidence nearby. In one report, he evaluated the area around the Steam Plant in Huntington Beach, and found that the plant was vulnerable to subsidence. (6:30-15:14)... Among the materials Law is donating to CSULB library is a binder full of information on petrographic studies. All of the information on consolidation, the derivation of rules, and investigative procedures have been developed by soil mechanics experts at Ivy League schools, all of whom study the findings of Tertzaghi. Tertzaghi and his followers did not believe that sands could be consolidated. He and other soil mechanics experts had to reorient themselves to the idea that sands in California do consolidate. Tertzaghi conducted petrographic studies for Edison Company and reported on how this process occurred. (15:14-21:23)... Arrestment of Subsidence in the Harbor Area, is among the materials he's donating to CSULB library and he discusses another copy of it along with several documents showing elevations and subsidence curves. The United States Navy conducted elevation studies every six months. Law admired the big, continuous charts the Navy made. Darrell Neighbors, however, scolded the Navy for the way they reported elevations. They added 100' to them so that no elevation, even if it was below sea level, would be reported as a negative number. The Navy claimed that this system prevented ships from running aground. Neighbors said the system made it more difficult to persuade policy makers and the public that subsidence threatened to let the ocean overrun the city. (21:23-25:54)... As Law searches through more correspondence and studies regarding subsidence, he discusses the issue of how oil well casing could lose length without losing diameter. (25:54-29:44)... Law continues discussing various studies of subsidence. The studies that he started in Long Beach were carried on, after he left city employment, by Dennis Allen and later yet, by Leonard Brock. End of tape *** File: subjlaw8.mp3 (0:00-3:19)... Brief introduction Law collected subsidence studies that Dennis Allen wrote when the US Navy asked the City of Long Beach for reports. The first recorded and identified incident of subsidence due to oil extraction was the subject of a lawsuit. Water flooding in the Ranger Zone in Long Beach harbor began as a result of subsidence abatement. (3:19-8:27)... The first investigation dedicated to the issue of subsidence was initiated by Eloi Amar, the Board of Harbor Commissioners, the City of Long Beach, and a number of other interested parties, which managed to gathered $300,000 to pay for the investigation. The second cooperative effort involved the implementation of unitization, at which time the City of Long Beach hired DeGolyer and McNaughton, a prestigious petroleum engineering firm. Unitization caused a great many problems among the individual oil well operators. The task before DeGolyer and McNaughton was to facilitate and expedite a compromise among these parties. Unitization was necessary to injection and injection was necessary to prevent further subsidence. (8:27-12:59)... In 1960, Dean Sheldon wrote a book entitled Basic Subsidence in which he analyzed elevation levels in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Sheldon was retained by Texaco and Humble (which had become Exxon at the time of the interview) to study the elevation levels on shore from their offshore well near Belmont Shore. Texaco and Humble wanted to establish elevation levels for Alamitos Bay and Belmont Shore in case their well was accused of causing subsidence. This might be a problem because Alamitos Bay only had 2 inches of freeboard and sometimes was inundated with high tides. Sheldon was to establish a "databank" for oil companies to use in possible future law suits. (12:59-18:03)... Law is looking at a map that shows the epicenter of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. Law believed there was a strong correlation between the intensity of earthquakes and the presence of subsidence. He looks at another map compiled by Standard Oil Company that shows earthquake epicenters and dates. It shows that earthquakes do not bunch up around subsidence bowls. (18:03-20:13)... Forty million dollars was reserved by the State of California to deal with issues related to the end of commercial injection. There's is a study that identifies the conditions and provisions regarding the City of Long Beach's rights to take over injection facilities and control injection practices for certain fault blocks. In addition, there is a record of the network of subsidence levels and elevation points within the city. (20:13-23:38)... As a supplement to his study, "A Statistical Approach to the Interstitial Heterogeneity of Sand Reservoirs," he wrote a mathematical study that was not accepted for publication by the American Institute of Mechanical Engineers. The study included some rather "weird" mathematical analysis, and was preceded by a much more profound and formal study completed by scientists working for Standard Oil of California. (23:38-27:48)... Among the papers he's donating to CSULB library, there are many studies that are "fugitive" sources. These sources were created under contract to private companies and, at the time they were created, weren't made public. John C. Elliott, Sr. was a leaders in the California Democratic Party leader who was given the credit for Woodrow Wilson's defeat of Charles Evans Hughes in the 1916 Presidential election; he helped him carry California and win the election. In Long Beach, Henry Clock was known as "Mr. Republican" and Elliott was known as "Mr. Democrat." Law worked for John C. Elliot, Jr., who has offshore holdings in Huntington Beach. He also also worked for Clock who had off shore oil wells. (27:48-30:28)... There is a long pause as he locates more material. Among the materials Law is giving to CSULB library are compilations of elevations recorded over time. Finding benchmarks is a "dreadfully tedious" job. When Law worked for the city of Long Beach, there were 6 strings of tools used to investigate a shear earthquake. They wanted to find out which oil wells were damaged. He's donating a notebook titled "WO-100," which is a "scout book" that detailed the wells damaged by shear earthquakes. This was the material which McCann and Wilts used to conduct their mathematical analysis. It was also used to determine where to dig bell holes to prevent shearing in oil wells. End of tape *** File: subjlaw9.mp3 (0:00-1:19)... Tape begins abruptly with a discussion of how to describe subsidence. The "Precise Leveling Procedural Manual" was prepared by the Southern California Cooperative Level Program, which included county and federal and state authorities. It was used by engineers to understand the survey procedures when looking for subsidence and provided a grid of the main arteries of elevation. (1:19-4:12)... Among the items Law is donating to CSULB library is a bibliography of materials relating to the Baldwin Hills Reservoir dam failure. It was commissioned by lawyers and consultants working for Standard Oil on the lawsuit that followed the failure and flood. (4:12-5:00)... Dean Sheldon was hired by Exxon (formally Humble) and Texaco to establish a databank of materials in case there might be subsidence and subsequent lawsuits filed against Texaco for oil production off shore from Belmont Shore. (5:00-8:04)... The Alamitos Barrier Gap District studied the injection of water in an attempt to prevent serious intrusion of salt water into the Alamitos Gap. Among the items Law is donating to CSULB library are 7 annual district publications. There are also materials on geologic and seismic activity from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists as well as 11 annual publications from the California Division of Oil and Gas covering various oil fields in southern California. (8:04-13:52)... He studied the rate of submergence of Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego, all of which sunk .007, which was 7 feet of subsidence every thousand years. Los Angeles only sunk 2 feet every thousand years. He collected data on the tide gauges going back to 1924. After conducting his research and making an assessment of his findings, he wrote to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and learned that his readings were not correct. End of tape
- SUBJECT BIO - Jan Law was a petroleum engineer who demonstrated that oil production in Long Beach harbor caused subsidence there. While other geologists and engineers hypothesized about what was causing the land under the city to sink, Law conducted experiments that demonstrated in which underground, oil bearing strata the sinking was occurring. In this series of four interviews, Law describes his role in both the scientific and public relations struggle to stop subsidence. He describes and evaluates many studies, including some that he wrote himself, of the causes, extent and results of the sinking. He collected many of them, along with photographs and other materials, and has donated them to the CSULB library. He predicts that those who have to deal with the continuing problems of subsidence will come to the library to consult his collection. In the interview, he also discusses other areas where subsidence was suspected to be a problem and other clients he worked for as a consulting petroleum engineer. At the end of each interview session, the interviewer collected the materials Law discussed and took them back to CSULB library. An inventory of those materials, prepared by CSULB librarian Wendy Culotta, is also <a href="http://www.csulb.edu/projects/voaha/docs/JANLAW.pdf">available on this web site</a>. The interviews were conducted as part of a project to study the impact of the discovery of oil on the development of Long Beach. TOPICS - Long Beach harbor; subsidence; "wheelbarrow shales" and "elephant turd shales;" subsidence studies; unitization; and roughnecks;Edison Company steam plants; US Navy; Darrell Neighbors; subsidence studies; subsidence; and Dennis Allen;Dennis Allen; unitization; subsidence; DeGolyer and McNaughton; Exxon Oil Company; Texaco; research studies; John; C; Elliott, Sr;; and Henry Clock; Baldwin Hills Reservoir failure; subsidence studies; Alamitos Barrier Gap District; subsidence; and Belmont Shore;
- Rights Note
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