Oil in Downtown Los Angeles

Most people have forgotten, but the Los Angeles region was once a leading producer of crude oil. On Monday a well operator was injecting hot water into an old oilfield near downtown, to coax some more production, when black crud started coming out of the ground under an apartment building at Pico and Olive, two blocks away. "It smelled like the La Brea Tar Pits," said one kid, and he was surely right. Cause and effect were established when the well operator, the St. James Oil company, stopped the injections and the oil flow ceased. More details from the L.A. Daily News.