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The US energy world was rocked yesterday by a new Energy Information Agency report that significantly cut the projection of recoverable oil from the massive Monterey Shale formation in California. That’s “cut” as in chopped, shredded, and mashed to a bloody pulp. How bad is the damage? Well, just a few years ago in 2011 the projection was for 13.7 billion barrels, and yesterday’s update brought it down to about 600 million. That’s a 96 percent drop for those of you keeping score at home. How’d the Monterey formation go from boom to bust in just three years? Just a...

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. The new estimate, expected to be released publicly next month, is a blow to the nation's oil future and to projections that an oil boom would bring as many...

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...

Depending on whom you ask, it looks like California is getting closer to tapping the nearly 15 billion barrels of recoverable oil that lies deep in the Monterey Shale. On September 20, 2013, Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 4 into effect, a bill that provides California with its first set of requirements specifically associated with hydraulic fracturing and other well stimulation techniques, such as acidizing. Less than one month later, the California Department of Conservation (DOC) has released proposed regulations applicable to well stimulation treatments in the state, initiated the State’s environmental review process and set the stage for the...

Anyone following the spread of fracking in California should check out an interesting — and frustrating — report this week from former San Francisco Chronicle journalist Rob Collier. It’s about “acidizing,” an oil production technique that involves pouring large amounts of hydrofluoric or hydrochloric acid down wells. Collier argues that it could be more effective than hydraulic fracturing as a way to unlock the Monterey Shale, an immense rock formation beneath central California that could hold more than 15 billion barrels of oil. The report, issued by the Next Generation think tank, gives a good introduction to the process and...

Fracking opponents in California have won what may be their first victory in court, with a federal magistrate’s ruling that federal authorities broke the law when they leased land in Monterey and Fresno counties to oil drillers without studying the possible risks of hydraulic fracturing. The decision, made public Sunday, will probably delay fracking on four sites leased by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in 2011. U.S. Magistrate Paul Grewal with the U.S. District Court in San Jose ruled that the bureau did not properly assess the threat that fracking could pose to water and wildlife before selling the...

Development of California's Monterey shale formation can play the major role in the state's future economic well-being, noted a recent study, "Powering California: The Monterey Shale and California's Economic Future", released by the University of Southern California (USC) and Los Angeles-based think tank Communications Institute. California's Monterey shale is estimated to hold 15 billion barrels of oil and development of the 1,750-square mile formation in central California could generate half a million new jobs by 2015 and 2.5 million jobs by 2020. "This report provides an indication that there is one potential bright spot in California's economic future: the increased...

Energy: The former Golden State is floating in debt, even as it sits on two-thirds of America's shale oil reserves locked in a formation four times the size of the one that sparked North Dakota's economic boom. North Dakota is now the largest oil producer in the country after Texas with a monthly oil output of about 20 million barrels. North Dakota's oil boom accounts for 11% of U.S. oil production, and it is the impetus behind the state's $3.8 billion surplus and an unemployment rate of just 3.2%, the lowest in the nation. California is not running a surplus,...

It may be the biggest insult since salsa made in New York City. Texas, long the nation’s oil capital, could get upstaged by California. That’s right, California. Enron’s prey-ground. Cap-and-trade fantasyland. Home of fossil-fuel-hating, electric-car-driving, green-dreamers. Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management sold 15 leases for about 18,000 acres in California’s Monterey Shale, which stretches 200 miles south from San Francisco. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates the shale formation could hold 15.4 billion barrels of oil, which would be double the combined reserves of the Bakken formation in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford shale of South...