California has long been an oil-producing state, but it’s getting renewed attention because of the Monterey Shale, the country’s largest shale oil resource. It stretches under a large part of Central California. In places like Southern Monterey County, where new oil leases are being offered, the battle for fracking is heating up.
On December 12th, the federal Bureau of Land Management is opening 18,000 acres for oil leases in Monterey, Fresno and San Benito Counties.
The Monterey/Santos shale play in southern California was estimated to hold 15.42 billion barrels, or 64 percent of the total. By comparison, the Bakken Shale was projected to hold 3.59 billion barrels of shale oil resource and the Eagle Ford 3.35 billion.
So the Monterey could hold twice as much recoverable shale oil as the Bakken and Eagle Ford combined.