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Kevin Laney, Vice President of Business Development.
The Long Beach Business Journal interviewed SHP’s Vice President of Business Development, Kevin Laney, on the future plans for a mixed-used development coming to Signal Hill. Below is the article and link to see the digital version from the Long Beach Business Journal.
“A vacant eight-acre parcel of land next to the closed-down Fresh & Easy at the corner of Cherry Avenue and Crescent Heights Street may be transformed in coming years into a mixed-use development with luxury apartments, retail and community space.
Signal Hill Petroleum (SHP), which owns the Fresh & Easy property and adjacent land, has entered into an exclusive negotiating agreement with the City of Signal Hill to purchase parcels surrounding the property. Assuming a deal is signed within the coming months, Signal Hill Petroleum will begin fleshing out its conceptual plans for the site into reality.
Renderings by architectural design and planning firm KTGY reveal a development, tentatively dubbed Heritage Square, that would hearken back to the history of Signal Hill as an oil town but also integrate modern elements.
“The idea behind this is very open concept,” Kevin Laney, vice president of business development for SHP, said. “It’s not your run-of-the-mill strip center. . . . That’s not what we’re going for here.”
Tentative plans for the site include 35,000 to 50,000 square feet of retail, which will be mostly food-oriented and accessible and open to the surrounding Cherry Avenue, Crescent Heights Street and Burnett Street.
SHP hopes to develop a two-story restaurant fronting the corner of Cherry Avenue and Burnett Street for “a very reputable restaurant group” that has a location in Long Beach and has expressed interest, Laney noted. A covered community space will serve as the development’s center.
“We and the city very much feel this needs to be kind of the town center,” Laney said. “We have worked hand-in-hand with the city so far, and we will moving forward, as well as with the community.”
At the rear of the site, SHP hopes to create a luxury apartment complex with potentially 200 units wrapped around a four-story garage to serve both residents and shoppers, according to Laney.
Signal Hill Petroleum’s proposed project off of Cherry Avenue would include a new market where Fresh & Easy once operated, as well as an adjacent community center. This conceptual rendering shows what such a center might look like. (Rendering provided by Signal Hill Petroleum)
SHP is already in negotiations with multiple boutique grocers for the former Fresh & Easy location. “The residents of the hill are very excited about having another nicer market coming in here,” Laney said. “It will be somebody that has a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, probably a deli section, probably an outdoor dining patio [and] that sort of thing.”
Because SHP already owns that site, the market will open in advance of the new development, Laney noted.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the city’s history, there are several oil wells on the site that need to be abandoned (properly closed off) or re-abandoned, Laney said. “They are kind of scattered throughout. And there will probably be a couple of producing wells that are retained that stay within the project, which is something that we’ve done all over town,” he said. This remediation work, which Laney pointed out SHP is well versed in, must take place before the development breaks ground.
Due diligence work associated with seismic assessments must also be undertaken. “Right now we are working on a fault study,” Laney said. “The Cherry Hill Fault, which is a sliver of the Newport Inglewood Fault system, runs through Signal Hill. . . . You have to locate that fault to know where it is in proximity to the building you are going to build.”
An agreement with the city for the purchase and development of former redevelopment agency-owned parcels within the proposed development footprint is being drafted, according to Laney. “I would hope we would have a signed agreement within six to nine months. . . . Then we are full steam ahead, actually investing in construction drawings,” he explained.
“Obviously, we want to respect the heritage of Signal Hill, and that is kind of the main theme of the entire project,” Laney said.”
Long Beach Business Journal Article: Signal Hill Petroleum Hopes to Create New City Center with Mixed-Use Development
Kevin Laney is vice president of rig operations for Signal Hill Petroleum (SHP), a crude oil and natural gas production company and real estate developer that employs about 140 people in the local area. (Photograph by the Business Journal’s Larry Duncan)
The Long Beach Business Journal wrote two different articles about the oil industry; the major role it plays in the state and regional economies, and the tough challenges faced but also the hopeful future. Below are statements from the articles and links to read the complete articles online.
“Despite fluctuating commodity prices, the oil and gas industry in California continues to be a major player in the state and regional economies, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs and generating billions of dollars in tax revenue, according to industry representatives…”
To continue reading more click on the link below:
Oil and Gas Industry Continues To play Major Role In State And Regional Economies
“A steep drop in crude oil prices has caused a major downturn in the oil and gas industry, forcing companies across the state and the country to pull back on capital expenditures, abandon oil rigs, cancel new drilling projects, enact pay cuts and in some cases lay off workers.
Local companies with a long history of surviving declines, however, have planned for such downturns by strategically diversifying assets. Company representatives in the Long Beach area said they remain hopeful about the future of the oil and gas industry despite the current low-price climate…”
To continue reading more click on the link below:
Amid Continued Price Slump, oil and Gas Industry Face Tough Challenges, Hopeful About Future
Kevin Laney with his family and members of the community.
Signal Hill Petroleum’s VP of Drilling/Rig Operations, Kevin Laney, was honored at the 25th annual Sultan’s Car Club of Long Beach car show. The anniversary show, which took place at Signal Hill Park on Sunday, August 2nd, featured over 250 pre-1975 model cars and trucks for viewing as patrons strolled through the park listening to classic tunes from the 50’s and 60’s. The annual show is such a special event for the City of Signal Hill as proceeds benefit Signal Hill youth groups and admission to the show is free, making it a community building and family-friendly show.
In the midst of the sea of custom classics, Laney’s beautiful Mariner blue 1950 Chevy pickup secured the prestigious Mayor’s Award presented by Mayor Larry Forester. Laney paid special homage to Signal Hill Petroleum by placing the company’s logo on both doors of the truck. Referring to his truck, Laney said it garnered, “a lot of positive attention – partly due to the logos, which a lot of locals recognized”. While the Chevy truck took home a People’s Choice Award at a show in Temecula, the significance of winning in Signal Hill brings special pride. Laney relayed that he hopes to continue to enter his truck in more shows as he and his family have a lot of fun doing so.
Kevin Laney accepting the Mayor’s Award from Signal Hill Chief of Police Micheal Langston
Laney’s beautiful Mariner blue 1950 Chevy pickup secured the prestigious Mayor’s Award presented by Mayor Larry Forester
Kevin Laney with his grandson in front of the award winning Mariner blue 1950 Chevy pickup
SHP was featured on the cover of the Long Beach Business Journal for the recent 2014 Oil and Gas E&P Company of the Year award. Read the following excerpt from the Long Beach Business Journal’s November 11-24, 2014 issue to see why they dubbed Signal Hill Petroleum “#1 On West Coast”.
#1 On West Coast – Signal Hill Petroleum Names Top Exploration/Production Company
Pictured near one of their drilling sites with Signal Hill Petroleum President and CEO Craig Barto, center, are David Slater, left, the firm’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, and Kevin Laney, vice president of rig operations for the company. (Photograph by the Business Journal’s Thomas McConville)
Long Beach Business Journal – November 11-24, 2014
By Michael Gougis, Contributing Writer
Beautiful, high-end condominiums with a view of blue-green Pacific Ocean waters and crude oil drilling and pumping rigs would seem to go together like – well, water and oil.
But not only has Signal Hill Petroleum managed to look for, ding and extract thousands of barrels of crude oil a day in such a challenging environment, it has performed the task so well that it was named the TEEMCO E&P Company of the Year for 2014 at the recent West Coast Oil And Gas awards ceremony.
“A lot of people in the industry thought this field was dead,” says David Slater, executive vice president and CEO of Signal Hill Petroleum. “But it’s a huge remaining resource. It took technology to economically unlock it.”
A combination of cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned public relations outreach has allowed the company to flourish in a potentially difficult environment, said the judges who awarded the firm the Exploration & Production Company of the Year award.
“Through use of sustainability programs, innovative exploration and extraction techniques, environmental/emission controls and community enhancement programs, the company appears to be able to work very successfully in an urban environment where other companies may struggle,” the judges said.
Founded in 1984, the company started with the acquisition of Shell’s assets on Signal Hill. Shell was repositioning in oil extraction operations elsewhere, and had put the Signal Hill assets up for sale. The field actually was owned by three large companies – Shell, ARCO and Texaco – and Signal Hill Petroleum spent the next two decades consolidating those properties into a single company.
“It was a very, very major accomplishment to aggregate ownership,” Slater says. “What that did was open the economic possibility of applying technology and doing a lot of things that had not been done before because of the fragmented ownership.
As a more mature asset, the field relies on salt water injection to make the field productive, Slater says. Salt water injection is done “to re-pressurize it (the underground reserves) and mobilize the remaining oil,” he says.
But drilling injection wells and extraction wells accurately relies on a thorough, detailed understanding of the subsurface soil formations. The high-end technology used by the company involves the three-dimensional mapping of the sub-strata in a way that Signal Hill Petroleum helped develop, a method of subsurface imaging that met the needs of an oil producing company trying to work in an urban environment.
Traditional three-dimensional imaging “is not very urban-friendly.” Slater says. “Lots of equipment, lots of cable.” Basically, the process relies on thousands of sensors that detect minute vibrations – but those sensors had to be connected together via cables. Signal Hill Petroleum began working with a company that was developing a system that collected the data wirelessly. When the wireless data gathering was perfected, Signal Hill Petroleum became the first oil company in the world to put such a system into field operation.
What the data shows the company “is how the earth is cracked and bent. It’s similar to what people who study earthquakes are interested in,” Slater says. The data has, in fact, been shared with institutions and universities across the nation. And it has given the company a clearer view of the cracks, bends and folds of the earth’s crust – data that the company uses to drill for crude. It has worked so well that the company actually is drilling new wells in the field – the first new wells in decades.
Currently, the company operates about 450 wells and produces about 3,500 barrels per day. And it does so largely in harmony with its neighbors. Debra Montalvo Russell, director of community relations, says Signal Hill Petroleum is a visible, accessible member of the community, and that helps maintain positive relations with the people who live and work near the company’s operations.
“We are out there so much, and we are giving information, and we are so accessible,” she says. “The difference about our company is that we put a face to the name,” she says. “Most of our employees are local residents. They are faces that people will recognize in the store, in the community. So people know and trust us. We’re here as members of the community.”
“We work really hard to be transparent, to be face-t-face, to provide real information, to open the gates,” Slater says. “Come on in and take a look – we’ll show you what we do and how we do it.”