Oil and gas have been extracted from the vicinity of the planned Clearview project since the 1920's. The Santa Barbara County Courthouse was partially funded from the royalties produced by oil extraction at the onshore Ellwood oil wells, which have long since been removed.
A large offshore oil field, the `South Ellwood' field, was discovered around 1960. An offshore oil platform, named Holly, was built in the mid-1960's by a partnership of ARCO and Mobil to extract oil from that field. Platform Holly sits in the ocean a few miles west of Coal Oil Point and the UCSB West Campus.
In the 1970's, a large addition to the South Ellwood field was discovered. New wells were drilled from Platform Holly. However, the eastern portions of the new addition was difficult to access from Holly, and ARCO proposed a new platform, Heron, to access those eastern portions. The Heron project was rejected by the State Lands Commission.
The Clearview project has been proposed by Mobil to access the South Ellwood field from onshore, near the Devereux Slough, on a site currently occupied by two large oil storage tanks. Mobil would drill down from that site, and then horizontally under the ocean, to access the offshore South Ellwood field. This sort of drilling, known as `extended reach drilling' or `slant drilling' has only recently become feasible. An advantage of onshore drilling is that the containment of an accidental oil spill is easier than containment of an offshore spill. A disadvantage is that the oil well is much closer to a densely populated area, so accidents bring with them an increased probability of harming the local population.