The Sheep Springs area of the Cymric oil field is located on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley approximately 40 miles due west from Bakersfield. Sheep Springs is relatively small, both in areal extent and in total oil reserves; however, it includes complex structural and stratigraphic traps which will be characteristic of probable future Westside oil fields.

Production is obtained from at least five different sands ranging in age from Pliocene to Oligocene. All but one of these sands pinch-out within one mile of the wells in which they are productive.

During the Miocene the Salt Creek anticline, with its associated normal faults, was developed. Oligocene and Miocene oil accumulated near pinch-outs of the sands and was localized by faults on the plunging nose and north flank of the anticline. After a period of erosion, Pliocene and Pleistocene

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deposition was accompanied by compressive forces which folded the younger beds, but which were absorbed by the top few hundred feet of Miocene shale. This produced an upper structure which has no relationship with the structure in the lower beds. Oil-saturated sands are found in the Pliocene at structurally high positions along pinch-out lines.

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