Energy Sector - 2

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<b>Oil in Beverly Hills `Humming' Where Britney Spears Is Shopping </b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->``In the Middle East you might have 300 barrels of oil per cubic acre, but in the Los Angeles Basin you might have 4,000 barrels per cubic acre,'' says Mike Edwards, vice president of Denver-based Venoco Inc., which has 24 active wells in the Beverly Hills area, including one alongside Beverly Hills High School. ``In terms of the land that produces oil, the basin is very rich.''

Beverly Center's kidney-bean shape was designed to accommodate drilling. It's one of two sites within blocks of Beverly Hills, a city of about 35,000 where Houston-based Plains, the fourth-biggest producer in California, is expanding. The 26-year-old mall houses 160 retailers, including Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Burberry. Pumping operations are hidden behind a wall between Macy's and Bloomingdale's.

`Weird Things'

``This is one of those weird things about Los Angeles,'' says Jeff Brown, the mall's general manager. ``There are oil wells all over the place. Drive down the street, you see hotel, beautiful house, oil well. Here, I don't know if shoppers know there's one or not. They probably don't.''

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This year all well on I-5, I-40 , I-10 are very active, never seen before. All over new collection centers are poping up.