Wrigley Association

Signal Hill Petroleum parked one of its seismic trucks on 28th Street in Veterans Park Monday night to show how its trucks will generate acoustical waves into the ground.

 

By CJ??ˆDablo
Staff Writer

On Monday night, Jan. 10, Signal Hill Petroleum (SHP) demonstrated its new “seismic trucks” that will bring what it hopes will be good vibrations to the area in the upcoming months.  
These trucks are key players in the local energy company’s plan to map an expansive area of the Earth’s crust, and, according to its representatives, the map will guide the company in its search for oil along the region’s fault lines.
“The commonality between earthquakes and oil and gas in Los Angeles Basin are the faults,” said David Slater, the chief operating officer and executive vice president for SHP. “The faults cause the earthquakes. They also trap the oil.” Although finding fault lines is no guarantee that there is oil, the data SHP will be collecting will offer a picture of the Earth’s subsurface, according to Slater.
“When you start working on those 3-D images, it’s just…it’s amazing insight into how the Earth is put together,” he said.
At the Wrigley Association’s monthly neighborhood council meeting at Veterans Park, dozens of people stood next to a white seismic truck about the size of a construction dump truck parked on 28th Street. They waited to experience firsthand the strength of the ground vibrations that would be generated by Signal Hill Petroleum’s seismic trucks.
While observers heard the drone of the vehicle’s idling engine, the ground trembled several times underneath their feet. How much the earth shook and whether it felt like an earthquake is a matter of opinion.
Colleen McDonald, president of the Wrigley Association, had attended a similar seismic truck demonstration last year in Signal Hill. She said this new demonstration felt stronger than the vibrations she had sampled in that previous demonstration.
“It felt like a distant earthquake to me,” she said. “So you can definitely feel it even from just one truck. And it wasn’t concerning to me as far as the structure of my house.”
Aaronya Foster, a Wrigley homeowner who also attended the demonstration in Signal Hill, said that Monday’s vibrations in Wrigley felt stronger than those in Signal Hill, but they weren’t as strong as controversial tests conducted by SHP in 2006. “I don’t think it’s going to be that bad,” she said. “But, you know, who knows?”
According to Slater, his company wants to keep the ground motion generated by the trucks at a comfortable level. They want the ground vibrations to feel like a foot massage. They’ve tested equipment with focus groups that included community members to determine what that comfortable level is.
Slater explained how creating the tremors could help SHP find new fault lines and possibly discover new pockets of oil resources. The company’s investment in new technology required extensive planning, including the purchase of new seismic trucks and the use of sound-recording devices called “nodes.”
The nodes are yellow cylinders that stand about eight inches tall with a diameter of six inches. According to Slater, about 5,000 nodes will be securely buried in 10-inch holes all over Signal Hill and the greater Long Beach area. Many will remain in the public right-of-way areas along major streets.
Once they are ready, according to Slater, seismic trucks will travel through a street and generate acoustic waves into the ground. The process will create noticeable ground motion. The acoustic waves generated by the trucks will bounce off geological formations as deep as 15,000 feet.
The nodes, which will have been scattered throughout the region, will record the reflections from the waves. The recordings will be uploaded to a system that will take the combined measurements to create a 3-D map. Slater said that the process could be compared to an ultrasound.
The petroleum company has obtained the necessary permits from both the city and private-property owners who have been affected, Slater said, adding that only certain streets will be tested. The survey area covers about 20 square miles.
SHP already performed initial tests last summer in different parts around Long Beach but didn’t get the complaints like the ones received in 2006, Slater said. Finding that appropriate level of ground motion and keeping the communication lines open with their neighbors may be crucial to the success of the project.
One problem came back to haunt the local energy company when they announced their plans to survey the region. In 2006, SHP tried to conduct a geological survey with different equipment. Some Wrigley residents said the tremors they generated were very strong. Foster, who was home at the time of testing, said it felt like a 6.0-magnitude earthquake.
According to several Wrigley residents, the equipment caused cracks in the walls of their homes after testing. Slater acknowledged the community’s problems with the project.
“We stepped back and looked at it,” he said, acknowledging that his company was new to the process. SHP had hired a reputable company to help plan and execute the project, but when things didn’t go well, they shut the project down in about two days.
SHP paid claims to about 10 homeowners to cover damages, Slater acknowledged. The company based its decisions on whether to pay particular homeowners on the conclusions by an independent civil engineer. This consulting engineer investigated each claim and then determined whether the seismic testing performed in 2006 caused any damages, according to Slater.
But when local media reports covered the story, dozens of other homeowners from around the region also complained that there were cracks in their walls, including one from Belmont Shore, miles away from the testing area. The company denied those claims when the inspector determined that damage at that distance could not have been caused by the testing.
“I understand their position,” said David Lewis, another Wrigley homeowner. “They don’t want a flood of people coming making fraudulent claims, trying to get their houses renovated when there wasn’t damage before.” His home wasn’t damaged in 2006.
So when Signal Hill Petroleum representatives announced last year that a new geological survey was underway (but this time with new technology), several residents in a November Wrigley Association meeting argued against the plans.
The Signal Tribune reported that at November’s meeting, residents fired heated words and angry accusations towards representatives of SHP. Slater was not present at that contentious meeting with the Wrigley Association, but he did attend the next meeting in January, where he offered residents the opportunity to question him as he defended the geophysical survey’s new plans.
“The comments we were hearing [Monday] night are very strong perceptions from five years ago, and that’s, you know, it’s a little bit frustrating,” Slater said. “But, as I said, we’re committed to educate and communicate about what’s happening today and to win everybody over to the fact that today is much different than 2006.”
Some residents raised their voices during the information session, but a few acknowledged that cooler heads prevailed this time at January’s meeting.
While Wrigley resident Mauna Eichner’s home was not affected in 2006, she claimed her friends’ homes were damaged. “They made a wrong decision as to how to handle the immediate neighborhood,” Eichner said. “And so none of us in the immediate neighborhood trusts them.”
Residents like Foster said that her home was damaged in 2006, but she was not then compensated for the damages. However, this time she scheduled a pre-inspection with Slater to see the cracks in her walls.
“Based on what I have observed for this meeting,” Foster said, “it appears that Dave Slater is attempting to make things right for the community.”
McDonald, the Wrigley Association’s president, agreed that there was an emphasis on outreach to the residents by Slater and his company. “I think, you know, any process can go bad,” she said, acknowledging that the petroleum company wanted to follow up with residents. The Wrigley Association, at least, would also pay close attention, she said.
Slater stressed that Long Beach would benefit from the project. The city owns the oil and mineral rights to a significant portion of the land that will be surveyed.
Workers will begin testing mid January and will conclude in July. The tests will take place Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 3:30pm.
The tests will survey an area bordered by Del Amo Boulevard to the north, Ocean Boulevard to the south, Clark Avenue to the east, and the Los Angeles River to the west.
“We want to be successful by design,” Slater said. “You know, successful in our minds is . . .that we don’t get complaints and we’re not upsetting our neighbors.”
For more information on these tests, call (562) 326-5186 or log on to lbgeophyisical.com.

File photo showing the seismic truck demonstrated by Signal Hill Petroleum during the May 19, 2009 Signal Hill Council meeting

 

By Nick Diamantides
Staff Writer

Last week the Signal Tribune published an article describing a recent Wrigley Association meeting during which several residents expressed anger at Signal Hill Petroleum (SHP) over tests the company is conducting to search for possible undiscovered deposits of crude oil or natural gas in Long Beach and Signal Hill. On Tuesday, Nov. 9, this reporter sat down with SHP officials to discuss their perspective on statements published in last week’s article.  
Dave Slater, chief operating officer (COO) and executive vice president of Signal Hill Petroleum, began the discussion by noting that more than four years ago SHP stopped the geophysical survey being conducted by Texas-based Dawson Geophysical because of residents’ concerns over how the survey was being conducted. Slater, however, insists that no significant damages resulted from the survey and, except for items that had fallen off shelves, even minor damages– such as cracks in drywall– could not be absolutely attributed to the vibrations coming from the trucks.
“In 2006, when we used Dawson Geophysical, we did receive a number of homeowner complaints of damage to their homes, consisting primarily of cracks in drywall,” he said. “At that time, we retained a licensed civil engineer who specializes in seismic damage evaluation and claims.”
Slater said the engineer conducted a thorough forensic engineering analysis of every house from which a complaint of damages came. According to Slater, the engineer concluded that, in almost every case, the cracks in the drywall had been there long before the geophysical survey was conducted. In a small number of homes, Slater acknowledged, the engineer found cracks that could not be absolutely proven to have occurred before the survey. “He (the engineer) told us, ‘I don’t think you did them, but I cannot absolutely prove that you did not do them,’” Slater said. “Where he could not give us his 100-percent professional opinion that the cracks were not preexisting, we negotiated with that homeowner for the costs of patching and repairing the cracks.” Slater said every such case involved very minor drywall cracks.
“The project in 2006 was very highly publicized in the local media,” Slater said. “As a result, a lot of homeowners began looking for cracks, and, when they discovered cracks that they had not seen before, they assumed that they had been caused by the survey. But the civil engineer conclusively proved that was not the case in all but a very few homes with very minor cracks in their drywall.”
Slater acknowledged that a small number of residents are still alleging that their homes were damaged by the 2006 survey.
Slater also explained that the survey now being conducted by NodalSeismic results in ground-motion levels much lower than levels experienced almost five years ago when Dawson Geophysical was conducting the survey. “There is some sensation of vibration in the vicinity of the seismic trucks, but it is not the sensation of an earthquake,” he said. “We also have a third-party company that has technicians with ground-motion monitors that record ground motion around the trucks to help us keep the ground motion below the limits that we have set.”
Slater added that in 2006 SHP received numerous complaints about the measuring instruments Dawson Geophysical was using to gather data pertaining to underground strata. “Those measuring instruments were connected by cable to a remote recording device,” he said. “We had miles and miles of cable that was in parkways and sidewalks, and that was very troubling to the public.” He noted that the current measuring instruments use wireless technology, eliminating the need for cables.
Getting back to the article that was published in the Signal Tribune last week, Slater said SHP has no record of an incident described by a woman at the Wrigley Association meeting. The woman claimed that a representative of the Long Beach Surgery Center had asked NodalSeismic to cease operations because the truck vibrations were putting patients at risk. “We believe that incident never happened,” Slater said. “We have independent monitors who respond to issues and complaints while the survey is being conducted and, after interviewing all of our monitors, we are convinced that the incident never happened.”
SHP Land Manager Brady Barto added that, since July 2009, NodalSeismic has had approximately 100 days of operations and, during all that time, neither SHP nor NodalSeismic has received any substantiated complaints of damages to homes or driveways. “There are a few cases of obvious fraud that we investigated immediately,” he said, adding that, when presented with the evidence, the people trying to obtain money from SHP withdrew their complaints.
Slater said there is one case in which a homeowner is claiming that preexisting cracks in his driveway grew larger as a result of NodalSeismic operations, but that the civil engineer is still studying the case.
Slater also acknowledged that, during one of the surveys, some items fell from shelves in a Long Beach curio shop and broke upon impact with the floor. “We immediately negotiated a reimbursement for the merchandise with the business owner,” Slater said.
Slater said the purpose of the geophysical survey was to determine if there are any undiscovered deposits of crude oil or natural gas in the Long Beach-Signal Hill area, but he did not disclose the results of the survey so far. “That’s all under evaluation at this time,” he said.
Slater said that NodalSeismic is currently working with representatives of the Wrigley Association to set up a demonstration of the seismic trucks in the Wrigley area prior to the next round of surveys set to begin early next year. “Signal Hill Petroleum is committed to this community, and we work hard at being a good corporate citizen,” he said. “We want to keep the lines of communications open with residents in this area. We want to get feedback from them and address their concerns.”

More Information
shpi.net
(562) 595-6440