[Milton Miteybad]

Federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil buried in California's vast Monterey Shale deposits, deflating its potential as a national "black gold mine" of petroleum.

Just 600 million barrels of oil can be extracted with existing technology, far below the 13.7 billion barrels once thought recoverable from the jumbled layers of subterranean rock spread across much of Central California, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.

I had always regarded the early estimates for the Monterey Shale as very optimistic, nearly to the point of being delusionally so. It made me wonder where this estimate came from. Turns out it was the work product of, as set forth in the LA Times article, a consulting outfit in Virginia, under a contract awarded by the Energy Information Agency.

Now, with all due respect to the fine folks of the Commonwealth of Virginia, it surely is not the first place you go to find top-flight geoscientists and petroleum engineers. Paper-pushing bureaucrats, yes. Reservoir engineers? No. The original Monterey Shale reserve estimates produced by that outfit prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I wonder how much that group charged the U.S. taxpayer for those bogus reserve estimates, anyway.

[Praxeologue]

I had always regarded the early estimates for the Monterey Shale as very optimistic, nearly to the point of being delusionally so. It made me wonder where this estimate came from. Turns out it was the work product of, as set forth in the LA Times article, a consulting outfit in Virginia, under a contract awarded by the Energy Information Agency.

So do you think that these consultants were asked to come in high and, if so, why? Was it to provide political cover for Obama and Brown to expand drilling activity in, and revenue for, Brown's California?