California is sitting on a massive amount of shale oil and could become the next oil boom state. But only if the industry can get the stuff out of the ground without upsetting the state’s powerful environmental lobby.
Running from Los Angeles to San Francisco, California’s Monterey Shale is thought to contain more oil than North Dakota’s Bakken and Texas’s Eagle Ford — both scenes of an oil boom that’s created thousands of jobs and boosted U.S. oil production to the highest rate in over a decade.
In fact, the Monterey is thought to hold over 400 billion barrels of oil, according to IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. That’s nearly half the conventional oil in all of Saudi Arabia. The United States consumes about 19 million barrels of oil a day.
“Four hundred billion barrels, that doesn’t escape anyone in this businesses,” said Stephen Trammel, energy research director at IHS.
The trick now is getting it out.
Read full article here: Source: Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney, January 15, 2013.