Secret Oil Rigs In Los Angeles Uncovered (VIDEO)

Did you know that LA sits on top of the third largest oil field in the country? Did you know oil rigs are scattered covertly throughout the city, placed near schools, malls and even a farmer's market? HuffPost Green did not know about this until we watched this awesome short from Palladium Boots about the secret, underground network of the LA oilfields and rigs hidden in plain sight as fake office buildings and flower-painted sculptures.

You have to see to this to believe it.

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Comments

[downsouth42]

11:52 AM on 12/03/2009

aye, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[Ribbitman]

08:36 AM on 12/03/2009

The only one that didn't know about this, is the author of this blog. He must be 20 years old. Hello, He or she should write about time before the year 2000.

[JScott]

02:50 AM on 12/03/2009

Not exactly a big secret, there's still a huge oil field in the Baldwin Hills, you pass by it on La Cienega Bl. on the way to/from LAX.

[roseau]

06:04 PM on 11/22/2009

Hardly the worst thing about living in LA.

[KIVPossum]

05:53 AM on 11/22/2009

OMG, they're pumping oil out of an oil field and trying to make the rigs look less imposing and ugly. How callous of the oil companies. Something needs to be done about this immediately.

[TxAggie]

05:33 PM on 11/30/2009

I agree, doing it to make the area more asthetically pleasing is so shallow and fake. They should make it as ugly as possible so people will remember to hate the evil oil companies while puttering around happily in their Mercedes, Bentleys, Lexus, etc.

[FlyOnTheWall45]

08:56 PM on 11/21/2009

The oil rigs are most likely located near the fast food restaurants. Genius.

[Aneesia]

07:12 PM on 11/21/2009

Secret ? No way. Everyone knows what they are. The are made more acceptable by changing their appearance.
Cell towers are disguised as Palm trees to make them look more acceptable.
It's like the secret tobacco warehouses of Rhodesia when Ian Smith was head of state. They were on the main road to Bulawayo and everyone knew what they were except the lunatic foreign press.
It's called investigative reporting to report on the FACTS !

[FormerReaganite]

12:09 AM on 11/21/2009

I think every LA property owner ought to drill a well in his backyard, in order to tap into some of that juice. It's valuable stuff, I've heard.

[Gucci Mane]

09:44 PM on 11/20/2009

This is very dumb... omg an oil field in LA... how shocking

What is the point of this? oil wells don't emit radiation and they're not pumping out gas into the air... if you hate oil so much go move to a co-op like they did in the 60's, it seemed to work well for manson.

Shocking Expose #2: Shocking sewage pipes below our feet....

Who knew that disease and toxin filled sewage was flowing through pipes right below our houses and our schools? Who let this happen??

[Bulrich]

07:39 PM on 11/20/2009

I'd like to see a story on other dirty tricks oil companies play like building homes on top of abandoned wells, cutting corners in environmental reviews, escaping oil severance tax in California, and getting away with exemptions in major federal legislation like the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Community Right to Know Act, etc.
I'd also like to see a story on the residents all over the LA basin, and the country, who are now demanding more accountability, regulations, and health studies for all oil operations that have not had adequate oversight or regulation up to this point.

[jimrs6]

03:11 PM on 11/20/2009

The sky is falling!!

[amy mall]

04:28 PM on 11/19/2009

Around the country, individuals are reporting illnesses, some very serious, that they link to contaminated air or drinking water from drilling near their homes. Protections for human health and our environment have not caught up with the pace of drilling. In addition to the sites mentioned in the video, urban drilling is happening elsewhere in the LA basin. NRDC Attorney Damon Nagami has blogged about one case in the Baldwin Hills where no new health or safety regulations were put in place to govern drilling operations after two neighborhood evacuations in 2006 due to toxic gas leaks. Joy Horowitz commented here on the health concerns in Beverly Hills. But this is also happening around the country. Loopholes for oil and gas companies in federal laws, and insufficient state and local regulations, allow air and water pollution right in backyards, not just in California but in Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado and more. It's time to close the oil and gas loopholes in our federal environmental statutes and require industry to use more environmentally friendly production techniques.

[Blimpius]

09:18 AM on 11/19/2009

So what, HP??? SO WHAT?? Oh, I know. It's that big bad stuff called oil. Don't want any to spill and maybe harm some useless minnow. It's much better to send our money to the Middle East.

[SimianNation]

10:11 AM on 11/19/2009

Obviously you don't get it. This was a green oriented piece for their (HP's) Green section.

...The More You Know....

[The Professor]

08:58 AM on 11/19/2009

I remember lots of pumpers (big things that look like grasshoppers) in Long Beach when I was a kid, maybe a hundred? I haven't been there in years but wouldn't expect otherwise. There is no news here, just alarmist reporting.

[spilkus]

08:45 AM on 11/19/2009

I just got back from this village near Los Angeles called La Brea. I smuggled out secret photos of these "tar pits" where animals are being trapped and murdered. Its shocking.