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Ayoluengo oil field

Sargentes de la Lora, Páramos, Burgos

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Ayoluengo oil field

Curiosity · Sargentes de la Lora, Páramos, Burgos

The Ayoluengo oil field, in Sargentes de la Lora, was the only oil field ever commercially worked in Spain, active between 1967 and 2017. The discovery was made on 6 June 1964, when an exploration by the joint venture Amospain-CAMPSA, with Standard Oil of California and Texaco, made a jet of crude oil almost fifty metres high burst out at a depth of 1,348 metres before numerous witnesses. Commercial extraction began on 9 February 1967, with an eleven-kilometre pipeline to Quintanilla Escalada. Production, barely 150 barrels a day and of poor quality due to traces of arsenic and sulphur, was used as industrial fuel in factories in Burgos; today the site is a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), in the ethnological ensemble category.

Photo: Zarateman (CC0)

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