Shale Oil Hype Fail: California Bonanza Evaporates

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/05/california-bonanza-evaporates.html

California's Shale Fail: The Case of 13 Billion Barrels of Missing Oil

Shale Oil Hype Fail: California Bonanza Evaporates
By contributors | May. 26, 2014
By Richard Heinberg

In 2011, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the US Department of Energy commissioned INTEK Inc., a Virginia-based consulting firm, to estimate how much oil might be recoverable from California’s vast Monterey Shale formation. Production of tight oil was soaring in North Dakota and south Texas, and small, risk-friendly drilling companies were making salivating noises (within earshot of potential investors) about the potential for an even bigger bonanza in the Golden State.

INTEK obliged with a somewhat opaque report (apparently based on oil company investor presentations) suggesting that the Monterey might yield 15.4 billion barrels—64 percent of the total estimated tight oil reserves of the lower 48 states. The EIA published this number as its own, and the University of Southern California then went on to use the 15.4 billion barrel figure as the basis for an economic study, claiming that California could look forward to 2.8 million additional jobs by 2020 and $24.6 billion per year in additional tax revenues if the Monterey reserves were “developed” (i.e., liquidated as quickly as possible).

We at Santa Rosa-based Post Carbon Institute took a skeptical view of both the EIA/INTEK and USC reports. In 2013, PCI Fellow David Hughes produced an in-depth study (and a report co-published by PCI and Physicians Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy) that examined the geology of the Monterey Shale and the status of current oil production projects there. Hughes found that the Monterey differs in several key respects from tight oil deposits in North Dakota and Texas, and that currently producing hydrofractured wells in the formation show much lower productivity than assumed in the EIA/INTEK report. Hughes concluded that “Californians would be well advised to avoid thinking of the Monterey Shale as a panacea for the State’s economic and energy concerns.”

On May 21 the Los Angeles Times reported that “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.” The EIA had already downgraded its technically recoverable reserves estimate for the Monterey from 15.4 to 13.7 billion barrels; now it was reducing the number to a paltry 0.6 billion barrels.

[SamKnause]

1. Shaking head.

I am so fucking sick of this crap !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[SamKnause]

2. K&R

[dipsydoodle]

3. "slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil"

Sounds like it was an investment scam in the first place.

[misterhighwasted]

4. Same thing I see happening in the Bakken Field in North Dakota. Well production is drastically

depleted after just a few years of pumping. As old wells become depleted, new wells are continually drilled & fracked (which is what's happening) & that is just how oil retrieval from shale rock has to be. Oil companies are there to get as much as they can, while they can and scale down that oil field to a maintenence operation, move out of the area & on to another shale field. Of course this will take years to drill the max number of wells allowed per State per section. In NDakota I believe it is 7 wells per section, unless the oil companies can convince the State to increase that limit.

Shale oil drilling is a completely different thing than deep well pools. And yes there are areas of the Bakken that do contain newer oil pools. This oil 'play' is the Three Forks. It is concentrated in only four particular areas of the Bakken Field.

This link from 2013 tells some good info on this subject.

http://www.ogfj.com/articles/print/volume-10/issue-12/features/three-forks-vs-bakken.html