page_title: Inglewood Oil Field
section_title: Geographic setting
hierarchical_section_title: Inglewood Oil Field / Geographic setting
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail of Inglewood Oil Field. By self, GFDL/cc by sa 3.0. Made in ArcGIS 10.2 using public domain and copyleft data.
context_page_description: The Inglewood Oil Field in Los Angeles County, California, is the 18th-largest oil field in the state and the second-most productive in the Los Angeles Basin. Discovered in 1924 and in continuous production ever since, in 2012 it produced approximately 2.8 million barrels of oil from some five hundred wells. Since 1924 it has produced almost 400 million barrels, and the California Department of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources has estimated that there are about 30 million barrels remaining in the field's one thousand acres, recoverable with present technology.
  The field is operated by Sentinel Peak Resources, which acquired it in their purchase of Freeport McMoRan's onshore California oil and gas assets in 2016. Freeport McMoRan acquired it from Plains Exploration & Production in 2013. Surrounded by Los Angeles and its suburbs, and having over one million people living within five miles of its boundary, it is the largest urban oil field in the United States. Freeport had pursued a vigorous program of field development through water-flooding and well stimulation to increase production, which has been slowly declining since the field's peak in 1925.
context_section_description: The Inglewood Oil Field underlies the Baldwin Hills, a range of low hills near the northern end of the Newport–Inglewood Fault Zone.  The hills are cut by numerous canyons, and include a central depression along the east side of which is a scarp representing the surface trace of the Newport–Inglewood Fault. The hills terminate abruptly on the north, east, and west, and slope gradually down to the south.  Surface drainage from the hills is generally south and west, with runoff from the oil field going into six retention basins which drain into the Los Angeles County storm drainage network, and then into either Centinela Creek or Ballona Creek.
  Climate in the area is Mediterranean, with cool rainy winters and mild summers, with the heat moderated by morning fog and low clouds.  The field contains both native and non-native vegetation, primarily on hillsides and in the narrow areas between drilling pads, tank farms, and work areas, as the field is densely developed.  Surrounding land use is residential, recreational, commercial, and industrial, including high-density housing. Racial makeup of the population living within one mile of the field boundary in 2006 was approximately 50% African-American and 15% Hispanic.  The 338-acre Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area is adjacent to the oilfield on the northeast.
  The oilfield is unusual in urban Los Angeles in being entirely open to view, developed in the traditional manner of individual pumpjacks on drilling pads.  Most other oil fields in the entirely urbanized parts of Los Angeles, such as the Beverly Hills and Salt Lake fields, hide their pumping and drilling equipment, storage tanks, and other operations in large windowless buildings disguised to blend in with the urban landscape.
caption: Detail of the Inglewood Oil Field, showing its position relative to nearby cities. Active oil wells are shown as black dots; blue dots are active water injection or disposal wells.
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