Oil well demolition will leave lone ‘grasshoppers’ south of Half Moon Bay

While the oil wells off Verde Road received approval for demolition, John Tedesco still has two operating wells on his land that’s near the open space property.

“In San Mateo County, I think I’m the only one left,” Tedesco said. 

The 71-year-old retired filmmaker said he sells about 150 barrels once a year to a Texas-based company that takes the oil to Bakersfield.

“I make some money — not a killing,” Tedesco said.

This is not dark, rich “Texas tea” but an oil he describes as “like a good glass of stout.”

Tedesco bought his land with the wells already on the property.

His green “grasshopper” units are the last of their breed in the region that Tedesco said may be rich in oil.

“I’ve been told over and over again there’s a lot of oil from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz,” he said.

But Tedesco doesn’t foresee any oil boom along the coast.

“I don’t think it would ever happen,” he said. 

“People get mad over gold,” Tedesco said. “They get mad over crude oil.”

He said he understands the open space district’s interest in removing the wells on its property but would like to see a placard noting the oil history in the area.

Tedesco spoke about a story he’s heard that the character played by actor Daniel Day Lewis in the 2007 movie “There Will Be Blood” once eyed Half Moon Bay for oil drilling. 

As the story’s told in Half Moon Bay, the oil man later portrayed in the movie ran up expenses before being run out of town, Tedesco recounted.

Upton Sinclair’s novel ‘Oil!’ is said to have inspired “There Will Be Blood.” 

“It’s a pretty crazy movie,” Tedesco said. 

Whether the figure in the film really saw the California coast as oil land may be lost to history, but onshore commercial production in San Mateo County did begin in 1886 in the Half Moon Bay area, according to a county general plan. Many oil wells were developed and later abandoned over the years, the plan said. 

Oil was discovered near Purissima along the coast in the 1880s but hopes of an oil boom ended when only 20 barrels a day were produced, according to a history of the former community near Highway 1 and Verde Road.

The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District will maintain its property — where the wells and hunting cabin are slated for demolition — as open space. The site was previously used as farmland and rangeland for livestock.

The abandoned oil site includes above-ground storage tank and oil production piping and oil processing. A total of 3,000 gallons of light crude oil would be removed and disposed.

ryan@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200 ext. 106