[1] 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.

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.

In recent years, field expansion and revitalization have been controversial with adjacent communities, which include Culver City, Baldwin Hills, and Ladera Heights.

In response, to assuage the fears of the surrounding community, Freeport McMoran's consultants have published reports attempting to show that such practices are safe.

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.

[5] Climate in the area is Mediterranean, with cool rainy winters and mild summers, with the heat moderated by morning fog and low clouds.

[7] 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.

[9] Nine pools have been identified within the oil field, given in order from top to bottom, with geologic formation, average depth below ground surface, and date of discovery:[10] Groundwater in the vicinity of the oil field was formerly thought to exist only in perched zones not connected to the major aquifers of the Los Angeles Basin, and found mainly in canyon sediments and weathered bedrock.

[14][15] The Baldwin Hills area had tempted drillers for years, but all early attempts to find oil were unsuccessful, probably because erosion and faulting made the anticlinal structure appear farther east than it really was.

On the afternoon of December 14, 1963, the dam collapsed, sending a wall of water north through the neighborhoods, roughly along Cloverdale Avenue, killing 5 people, destroying 65 houses and damaging hundreds more.

[23] Unfortunately for those plans, PXP begin a vigorous program of field redevelopment in the early 2000s after seismic testing and modeling showed more unrecovered oil than previously believed.

[3] A CSD is a Los Angeles planning document – essentially a series of supplemental, enforceable regulations – that address concerns specific to a geographic area.

The field straddles the Newport–Inglewood Fault, a seismic hazard the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has judged capable of a 7.4 MW magnitude earthquake.

The various parties settled the suit in 2011, agreeing on scaled-back field development, greater noise and air pollution protection, and in addition, PXP was required to commission an outside consultant to do a thorough study of the potential effects of hydraulic fracturing on the oilfield and surrounding communities.

[27][28][29] Activity and controversy on the Inglewood field takes place in an environment of increasing public and regulatory scrutiny of the practice of hydraulic fracturing.

[30] In October 2015, Culver City proposed its own rules for the portion of the field within its limits, including new buffers between drilling sites and homes, and whether or not to allow hydraulic fracturing.

[32] Oil is sold and transported away from the field in a pipeline owned by Chevron to area refineries where it is mostly made into gasoline for sale in the Southern California market.