California Heights

By Nick Diamantides
Staff Writer

Angry words and accusations shot across the room like arrows at the Wrigley Association’s monthly meeting on Monday night. Several people in the audience wanted to let Dan Hollis know they were not at all pleased with Signal Hill Petroleum’s plans to send vibrating seismic trucks through the Wrigley District in search of undiscovered underground reservoirs of crude oil and natural gas.
About 45 people attended the meeting, which took place in the community center at Veterans Park.
Hollis is the managing partner of NodalSeismic, a company that is wholly owned by Signal Hill Petroleum. Since the summer of 2009, seismic trucks operated by the company have traversed much of the Long Beach-Signal Hill area, sending sonic waves deep below the earth’s surface.
The problem is that Signal Hill Petroleum hired Dawson Geophysical, a Texas firm, to do the same thing about four years ago. That company’s operations resulted in damages to several homes, and the unnerving of many residents who had no idea what was causing the vibrations.
Hollis gave a brief presentation describing the operation of the trucks to the Wrigley Association, and he assured the audience that the more advanced technology developed by NodalSeismic uses much weaker vibrations that do not cause the kind of shaking experienced by residents four years ago.
Hollis explained that the trucks have vibrating steel pads that are part of an advanced version of sonar technology. “We send acoustic waves down into the ground, and they reflect off of the various layering of the rock,” he said. “The waves come back to the surface, and they are recorded in motion sensors we plant in the area.” He explained that the company will plant 5,000 of the sensors in shallow holes in the West Long Beach area. Later, data gathered by the sensors will be fed into computers to help geologists determine whether oil or gas deposits exist in certain areas.
The project will take about four months, but crews will be going to various areas to change the sensors about once every two weeks because that is about how long their batteries last.
Hollis told the audience that the trucks will place their pads on the ground, send out vibrations for about six minutes, pick up the pads and move to the next location about 55 feet away.
“They will be going throughout the city on this,” he said. “The locations will be posted on our website, and we will also be distributing flyers in the neighborhoods several days before our operations. We want to be sure you understand the impact and what to expect.” He added that two or three hours before operations begin in a certain area, NodalSeismic employees will knock on doors to remind residents of what to expect later that day.
The project is slated to begin in early January. The precise dates and locations of the operations have not been determined yet, but Hollis said that information will be posted ahead of time.
“We have spent a lot of time and effort over the past four years analyzing how to do this work to minimize any sort of impact to the community,” he said. “We don’t want any surprises. We want you to understand what is going on.”
After his presentation, Hollis invited questions and comments from the audience. The hostility of several members of the Wrigley Association became apparent immediately. “You lied to us,” one man said. “At a Long Beach City Council meeting, we were told the trucks would not be going through the Wrigley District, and now you are telling us they are coming here.”
Hollis responded that the city council meeting pertained to an earlier NodalSeismic survey, and he was now talking about the company’s next survey.
A woman challenged Hollis on that point. “If that is true, then why was one of your trucks operating right in front of the Surgery Center [of Long Beach], which is in the Wrigley area, after the assurances we were given at that council meeting?” she asked. “In fact, someone from the Surgery Center had to ask your people to stop the process because the vibrations were putting their patients at risk.” Hollis said he didn’t know about that incident, but he would look into it.
Another woman alleged that when Dawson Geophysical conducted the survey several years ago, she and her husband watched as the walls of their house buckled and cracked. “We watched the damage happening while your trucks were making things shake,” she said. “When we complained, Signal Hill Petroleum sent a structural engineer to our house, and he said the damage was not caused by the trucks, so Signal Hill Petroleum never compensated us for our losses.”
The woman’s husband added, “Why should we trust Signal Hill Petroleum now, when they lied to us before?”
Several Wrigley Association members then took turns describing uncompensated damages to their homes caused by Dawson Geophysical.
Hollis and Diane Ripley, a public-relations consultant hired by Signal Hill Petroleum, tired to assuage the members’ concerns, but to no avail. After several minutes of continuing accusations and voices growing louder, Wrigley Association President Colleen McDonald asked everyone to quiet down. “We are going to have another meeting to talk more about this,” she said.
“What I really want to do is have a seismic truck demonstration right here in Wrigley so people can see how it works, know what to expect and ask questions,” Ripley said.
McDonald said that is a possibility. “These are our homes and our investments, and it is going to take a high level of persuasion for us to trust (another geophysical survey) again,” she said.

More Information
(562) 326-5186
nodalseismic.com