Vast oil trove trapped in Monterey Shale formation

[unhappycamper]

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-monterey-shale-20140407,0,1931485.story

Vast oil trove trapped in Monterey Shale formation
By Julie Cart
April 6, 2014, 6:25 p.m.

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.

[House of Roberts]

1. My first thought:

They don't have the water to do this.

And according to this post, http://www.democraticunderground.com/112767611 , they don't.

[NickB79]

3. Can seawater be used for fracking?

Because if they're money to be made, they'll find a way to get that oil out.

Hell, I wouldn't put it past a few multinational oil companies to build private desalination plants on the coast and pipe the water in. It might cost a billion dollars, but 15 billion barrels of oil at $100/barrel.......

[earthside]

2. More confirmation of peak oil.

The cheap, easy to access oil is going away.

Peak oil never said that we would use up all the petroleum, only that conventional oil production would peak and that we would then be forced to look for and produce unconventional oil ... and that is what this is.

If this is ever produced it will be rather expensive, involve lots of water -- we will have to be in a desperate energy predicament before the Monterey Shale becomes truly necessary.

If the big oil corporations really are serious about this area now, well, that ought to be a clue that this hype about the U.S. becoming some kind of new Saudi Arabia is mostly about marketing and inflating an 'oil bubble'.

[Champion Jack]

4. Well said

[NickB79]

5. The only good thing to come out of the drought

Not enough water to frack.