Kern County Tier I - Oil and Gas Primary Activity (1-28-2015)

Tier I is defined as the areas in which current oil and gas activity is the primary land use. The well and activity densities preclude almost all other uses. According to Division of Oil Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) well information, 91.5% of all the oil and gas wells within the Project Study Area in 2014 were located within Tier I Areas. The Tier I areas were developed through the use of well database shapefiles for District 4 obtained from the Division of Oil Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), PLSS data obtained from the BLM Sacramento State Office (LandStatus_v10.gdb), and 2014 aerial orthoimagery. Tier I areas generally incude all quarter-quarter Sections (40 acres) that contain 4 or more wells or areas adjacent to quarter-quarter Sections with 4 or more wells where oil and gas activity is the primary land use (based on aerial orthoimagery). Tier I does not include sensitive land uses such as cemeteries, schools, hospitals, and land classified by the Department of Conservations's (DOC) Farmland Mapping and Monitoring Program as: Prime Farmland, Farmland of Statewide Importance, Unique Farmlands, or Confined Animal Agriculture.