opponents expected this would adversely affect nearby oil drilling sites. Some local residents were also fearful of the international organizations that would monitor and report on the monument's adherence to World Heritage treaty obligations, because maintenance of World Heritage status would depend on compliance with the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, ratified by the United States. The idea was widespread that the United States would lose sovereignty over the area. The Wilderness Society eventually decided not to nominate the Carrizo Plain National Monument as a World Heritage Site, as nominations are successful only if they have almost unanimous support. Oil drilling While the Carrizo Plain is dotted with dry holes drilled and abandoned by oil companies in decades past, no commercially viable quantities of petroleum have ever been found on the plain itself. Small quantities of drillable oil have been found south of the Caliente Range, near the Russell Ranch Oil Field, and in the northeast part of the Temblors, abutting the giant McKittrick and Cymric fields. As the plain is adjacent to the super-giant oil fields of Kern County – the Midway-Sunset Oil Field, third largest in the United States, is on the other side of the Temblor Range – the Carrizo Plain has long been considered to have at least a moderate potential for oil development. However, as it is separated from the major oil fields by the San Andreas Fault, and the underlying source rock, the Monterey Formation appears not to have been buried at the right conditions of temperature and pressure, and as the stratigraphy has not favored petroleum entrapment, accumulations of oil in economically recoverable quantities have not been found. Currently, Vintage Production, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, owns the mineral rights to 30,000 of the monument's . When oil prices spiked in 2007, Vintage notified the U.S. Bureau of Land Management of its intentions to find out if oil is contained in the Carrizo Plain. The mineral rights owned by Vintage pre-exist the monument's creation by President Bill Clinton in 2001. Solar power The remote Carrizo Plain's status as one of the sunniest places in the state was exploited by the solar power industry from 1983 to 1994. This was by far the largest photovoltaic array in the world, with 100,000 of the photovoltaic arrays producing 5.2 megawatts at its peak. The plant was originally constructed by the