Ellwood Oil Field

Ellwood Oil Field (also spelled "Elwood")and South Ellwood Offshore Oil Field are a pair of adjacent, partially active oil fields adjoining the city of Goleta, California, about twelve miles (19 km) west of Santa Barbara, largely in the Santa Barbara Channel. A richly productive field in the 1930s, the Ellwood Oil Field was important to the economic development of the Santa Barbara area. The Japanese submarine I-17 shelled the area during World War II, the first direct naval bombardment of the U.S. mainland of the war, causing an invasion scare on the West Coast.

The Ellwood Oil Field is located approximately 12 miles (19 km) west of the city of Santa Barbara, beginning at the western boundary of the city of Goleta, proceeding west into the Pacific and then back onshore near Dos Pueblos Ranch. The onshore portions of the field include beach, coastal bluffs, blufftop grasslands, and eucalyptus groves. Some of the former oil field is now part of the Ellwood-Devereux Open Space, maintained by the city of Goleta, and the Bacara Resort, Sandpiper Golf Course, and new Goleta housing developments sit on areas formerly occupied by pump-jacks, derricks, and oil storage tanks.

The climate is Mediterranean, with an equable temperature regime year-round, and most of the precipitation falling between October and April in the form of rain. Freezes are rare. Runoff is towards the ocean, and to a few vernal pools on the bluffs. The offshore portions of the Ellwood oil field are in relatively shallow water, and were drilled from piers.

The South Ellwood Offshore field is entirely beneath the Pacific Ocean, about two miles (3 km) from the main onshore oil field. It is entirely within the State Tidelands zone, which encompasses areas within three nautical miles (6 km) of shore. These regions are subject to state, rather than Federal regulation. Currently the only production from this field is from Platform Holly, which is in 211 feet (64 m) of water, about two miles (3 km) from the coast at Coal Oil Point. Numerous directionally-drilled oil wells originate at the platform, and several pipelines connect the platform to an onshore oil processing facility adjacent to the Sandpiper Golf Course.

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