That map shows the assessed basins. I bet there are a lot more un-assessed basins that aren’t shown on that map.
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Hard to say.
Drillers have been punching holes in the ground all around the world for a century.
All the fields you see have always been known—they just have not been commercial until modern technology made them commercial.
I find it hard to believe that the only potential out west is that tiny sliver on the southern California coast. The first well drilled in California was way up north in Humboldt County at Petrolia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrolia,_California#History
“The white settlers originally called the place New Jerusalem; when the first oil was pumped in 1865, it was renamed Petrolia.[3] It was the site of the first oil well drilled in California.[2] The oil was very fine and ultimately dried up; the site is now registered as California Historical Landmark #543.[2]”
I have heard from oldtimers stories of oil in the Eel River Valley and apparently others have heard also.
Is Humboldt County Being Fracked?
http://lostcoastoutpost.com/2014/mar/16/fracking-humboldt-county/
The first known instance of an energy company “fracking” near the Eel River’s estuary was in 2008, when Houston, Texas-based Foothills California, Inc. carried out the controversial extraction technique in two of its wells on Grizzly Bluff, located in the mountains south and west of Rohnerville and Alton. Foothills is a private firm incorporated in Houston, with a subsidiary in the epicenter of California’s oil industry, Bakersfield. Three long-time Texas and California oilmen founded the company in 2006.
Foothills has received a sizable share of its financial backing from notorious global investment firm Goldman Sachs, the world’s largest. The notorious merchant bank owned eight million shares in the company as of March 31, 2009, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Because Foothills, Inc. went private four years ago, right as fracking was becoming a swear word to environmentalists and people who oppose the poisoning and despoliation of water supplies in general. Thus, it is difficult to know exactly what sorts of drilling activities the company has undertaken since then, or what its current ownership structure is. Under California and federal law, they have not been required to disclose whether they are fracking, or where.
“In the past decade, we believe the industry has overlooked the hydrocarbon potential and production within the Eel River Basin due to its relatively isolated position in California,” the sole 2009 Foothills, Inc. report to its shareholders reads.
It continues, “We performed a CO2 foam fracture simulation program on the Vicenus 1-3 and GB 5 wells in June 2008. As of June 3, 2008, the wells were continuing to unload the fracture fluid, and the results of the fracture simulations had not been determined. Further drilling in the Eel River Basin will be planned after the cumulative results of these activities have been evaluated.”
All told, Foothills Inc. now has drilling rights on roughly 12,000 acres in the Eel River delta region in general, and on Grizzly Bluff in particular.
Another oil and gas company with holdings on Grizzly Bluff is Forexco, which reportedly works nine wells with another 13 on tap to be drilled in the near future. The company is registered in North Carolina, and its main backing comes from CitiGroup. The company also has proposed to construct a natural gas collection and transportation system that would cross the Eel River and interconnect with the existing gas sales delivery point at the Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s (PG&E) natural gas meter station in Alton.”
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