The rigs are connected by underground pipes to storage tanks in the middle of the course. The liquid they siphon from the soil is 90% water, a common trait for Southern California wells. From that brew, an inky crude, redolent of gasoline, is extracted and shipped to refineries.
Tanker trucks rumble in and out of Coyote Hills along golf cart paths specially built to handle the heavy vehicles. Faux rocks along the course are painted with signs that warn golfers: "Caution: Oil Truck Traffic."
Duncan, who keeps sample jars of crude in his office cupboard, believes Coyote Hills strikes a good balance between commercial and ecological interests: "It's a great way to give back to the community while still producing oil."
Nevertheless, many humans remain wary of drilling. In downtown Huntington Beach, where aging rocking-horse pumps sit sandwiched between houses and behind a Dairy Queen, residents grumble about fumes, aesthetics and safety.
And with some reason. The quest for oil has produced some freakish side effects.
In 1973, a retired sea captain's Newport Beach cottage began filling with bubbling crude from an abandoned well underneath.
A few years later, a real estate agent who was getting ready to show a Newport house flipped on a light switch and the place burst into flames. No one was injured in the blaze, which was blamed on methane gas from an old well.
Oil drilling also caused a swath of Long Beach to sink 29 feet in the 1950s, cracking buildings, roads and bridges. Engineers began injecting the ground with water to halt further subsiding.
In April 2004, an abandoned well in Huntington Beach spewed oil 40 feet into the air, coating nearby sidewalks, plants and cars with a gooey layer of homegrown "Texas tea."
But not everyone considers oil drilling an eyesore. Orange County artist JoAnn Cowans has been painting oil rigs since the 1960s, after she moved to California from North Carolina and "fell in love" with the derricks at Venice Beach.
"They looked like wonderful abstract sculptures," she explains on her website.
The Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton recently showcased Cowans' work, which includes such titles as "Derricks After the Rain."
Other black-gold aficionados include the West Kern Oil Museum in Taft, which is designed to resemble a 1920s petroleum company camp, complete with towering wooden derrick. At the gift shop, visitors can buy oil derrick cookie cutters.
One of the oldest traces of Orange County's oil heritage can be found in the middle of Olinda Ranch, a pricey new housing tract in the foothills of Brea. There, a 1912 oil field house and a still-working 1897 well highlight the 12-acre Olinda Historic Museum and Park.
The museum aims to "recapture the sights, sounds and smells" of the once-bustling oil town, which vanished by the early 1940s.
Visitors can "travel back in time to explore what life was like as an Olinda wildcatter," according to a brochure. The trick is to ignore all the million-dollar homes that now border the park.
