Posted on 04/08/2014 9:51:16 AM PDT by Praxeologue
SHAFTER, Calif. — A bustling city is sprouting on five acres here, carved out of a vast almond grove. Tanker trucks and heavy equipment come and go, a row of office trailers runs the length of the site and an imposing 150-foot drilling rig illuminated by football-field-like lights rises over the trees.
It's all been hustled into service to solve a tantalizing riddle: how to tap into the largest oil shale reservoir in the United States.
Across the southern San Joaquin Valley, oil exploration sites have popped up in agricultural fields and on government land, driven by the hope that technological advances in oil extraction — primarily hydraulic fracturing and acidization — can help provide access to deep and lucrative oil reserves.
The race began after the federal Energy Information Administration estimated in 2011 that more than 15 billion barrels of recoverable oil is trapped in what's known as the Monterey Shale formation, which covers 1,750 square miles, roughly from Bakersfield to Fresno.
But getting at that oil isn't easy. The Monterey Shale is unlike other oil shale formations across the United States. In those booming oil fields, reserves are pooled in orderly strata of rock. Once the rock is cracked open by fracking or other means, operators can sink a single well with multiple horizontal shafts and pull in oil from a wide area.
California's geology is far more complicated. The earth under the Monterey Shale has undergone constant seismic reshaping that has folded, stacked and fractured the substrate, trapping the oil in accordion pleats of hard rock at depths of up to 12,000 feet. To reach the crude using conventional methods requires oil companies to drill far-deeper wells, and more of them — a prohibitively expensive undertaking.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
No matter what method proves successful, it will be banned in California.
Which raises the question, “what is the REAL motive?”
don’t you need a lot of water to get that stuff? or am I thinking of the wrong hydrocarbon
Jerry Brown versus Tom Steyer
Abiotic Oil and Gas: A Theory That Refuses To Vanish
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/400230-vinod-dar/47079-abiotic-oil-and-gas-a-theory-that-refuses-to-vanish
For Brown it is tax revenue ... other people's money.
EVERYTHING obama does either:a) Weakens America/AmericansI have yet to have anyone raise a single substantive counter example in several years of posting this.
b) Distances America's allies
c) Strengthens America's enemies
d) Serves Islam
e) Harms Israel
Or some combination of the above.
Except substitute "illegal aliens/welfare recipients" and "American citizens/taxpayers" where appropriate.
This is so great! It will make the CA libtards heads explode! LOL!
So they’re going to frack the San Andreas fault line? Wonder how that will work out.
Fossils From Animals And Plants Are Not Necessary For Crude Oil And Natural Gas, Swedish Researchers Find
http://www.viewzone.com/abioticoil.html
California has WAY more than enough resources to EASILY resolve whatever financial difficulties the state finds itself in, yet they persist in artificially handicapping themselves with a series of cockamamie “environmental” rules that make no economic OR ecological sense.
For one thing, they could turn the irrigation water on again. And stop stealing electricity from all their neighbors, rather than getting serious about producing their needs within the state.
And reform their highly regressive tax code that, surprisingly, hits the lower end much harder, proportionately, than the high end, most specifically the very high sales tax. California should turn either to sales/consumption taxes, or all to income taxes, but not the combination of both.
And live within their means.
Just like Bigfoot and Alien abductions.
... along with all the other liberal fracking causes celebres, such as earthquakes.
This is actually good. Jerry Brown is doing what no conservative could and is setting an example for other states and countries, i.e. Germany.
You don’t believe in alien abductions? [snort]
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