Orcutt, Cat Canyon, and the Santa Maria Valley: heavy oil country with a century of history and almost no remaining buyers. We still buy.
Santa Barbara County is where California's environmental politics run strongest and where its oil history runs oldest, side by side in the Santa Maria Valley. Orcutt and Cat Canyon have produced heavy oil since the horse-and-buggy era, and families across the country still hold fractions here from ancestors who worked for Union Oil or bought valley land a century ago.
Buyers have all but abandoned the county, which leaves owners with no market and no way to learn what they hold. We fill that gap: free research, an honest valuation off the actual wells with the county discount shown, and a real offer when the numbers support one.
Union Oil's 1901 discovery above the Santa Maria Valley, still producing heavy oil a century and a quarter later.
One of the largest fields on the central coast, a sprawling heavy-oil accumulation with a long revival-and-retreat history.
The valley fields around Santa Maria and Orcutt where town growth and oil have always shared ground.
Wherever your interest sits in Santa Barbara County, we will research it free and value it with the work shown.
We buy in every California county, including ones without a page here. See the full county index or the California overview.
Everything a California owner needs in one place: who owns what under state law, how royalties must be paid and by when, what a buyer can and cannot deduct, the tax treatment of a sale, and the deadlines that quietly cost people their minerals. Free, and no sign-up.
Read the California guideThe things owners here most often wish they had read first. All free, none of it gated.
Free, no obligation, and no pressure. We reply within one business day, usually faster.
Prefer the phone? Call or text 918-984-1645 and you will get Stephen, the owner, not a call center. If we miss you, we text back the same day.