Vast Oil Reserve May Now Be Within Reach, and Battle Heats Up

New York Times ^ | Feb 3, 2013 | NORIMITSU ONISHI

[thackney]

...For decades, oilmen have been unable to extricate the Monterey Shale’s crude because of its complex geological formation, which makes extraction quite expensive. But as the oil industry’s technological advances succeed in unlocking oil from increasingly difficult locations, there is heady talk that California could be in store for a new oil boom.

Established companies are expanding into the Monterey Shale, while newcomers are opening offices in Bakersfield, the capital of California’s oil industry, about 40 miles east of here. With oil prices remaining high, landmen are buying up leases on federal land, sometimes bidding more than a thousand dollars an acre in auctions that used to fetch the minimum of $2.

“We’ve seen a significant increase in the last three to five years in the price paid from our sales,” said Gabriel Garcia, assistant field manager at the federal Bureau of Land Management’s office in Bakersfield. “Some of that has to do with speculation on new technologies, and some of that has to do with the high price of oil.”

The Monterey Shale has also galvanized California’s powerful environmental groups. They are pressing the state to strictly regulate hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the drilling technique that has fueled the shale oil and gas boom elsewhere but has drawn opposition from many environmentalists. In December, the State Department of Conservation released a draft of fracking rules, the first step in a yearlong process to establish regulations.

Severin Borenstein, a co-director of the Energy Institute at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, said technological advances and the high price of oil were driving interest in the Monterey Shale, just as elsewhere.

“Everyone has known that there is shale oil not just in...

[MrB]

And 0bama will make sure to sell these resources to China.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Now we know why the Saudis financed Matt Demon's anti-fracking propaganda movie.

[okie01]

The enviro-wackos are heard from...

...said Kassie Siegel, a lawyer at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Fracking poisons the air we breathe and the water we drink."

And, as usual, it's bullsh*t -- the pure and unadulterated variety.

[Democrat_media]

Obama, Democrats, the EPA and the media will shut this down because they say oil causes global warming. But global warming is a hoax. the government spend trillions and decades researching , funding and creating this hoax. proves socialism/government never works and is the enemy

[thackney]

It was the UAE, not Saudi Arabia.

Same point, different OPEC member.

Matt Damon’s Anti-Fracking Movie Financed by Oil-Rich Arab Nation
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/28/matt-damons-anti-fracking-movie-financed-by-oil-rich-arab-nation/

[bandleader]

This is a “Buy”signal for Halliburton,etc..........

[thackney]

So you believe Halliburton will get a lot of business in California?

[dennisw]

Our oil/gas/energy sectors are real world productive sectors. So of course the toads in the non-productive Gov’t sector in DC at EPA and other agencies will put up as many obstacles as they can. This how how they “earn” their $120,000+ + + salaries. By playing to the libs, the idiots and the eco-freaks

[DUMBGRUNT]

“If and when the oil companies figure out how to exploit that shale oil, California could be transformed almost overnight,”

Yes California may me transformed over night!

Tax and spending junkies everywhere are addicted to dollars and there is no telling how low they might sink for a few more bucks.

As J. Brown (Gov) sees his beloved self image sinking in red ink, he may not want that to be his 'place' in history?

They say a desperate junkie will do anything for a fix. And we are in desperate times.

[Fightin Whitey]

hi thackney...

Serious question for you. Every week we seem to get news of a huge new shale reserve, the Cline, Monterey, others in Mexico, Australia, on and on.

Do you have any sense about if and when this (supposedly) burgeoning availability will cause the price and the boom to collapse?

Trillion dollar question I know but I’m interested in your thoughts...freepmail if you prefer..thanks!

[blueunicorn6]

My understanding is that the production costs for the Saudis are much lower than for most other oil. The auto markets in India and China are booming. I think you also have to factor in the new automobile power technologies. OPEC is walking a tightrope right now. They love the high prices for oil. Honestly, if the Middle East can’t make money off of oil, what can they make money off of? The problem for OPEC is when all these new fields open up and people take a look at other things than just the price of the oil itself. What does it cost to transport that oil? The Saudis may have lots of oil, but they have no local market for it.

[painter]

I have heard that the shale thickness in the Cline “play” is something like 300ft thick. The balken(sp) in North Dakota is like 30 ft thick. I have also heard the Monterey “play” is also huge,maybe not as large as the Cline play.

[Nuc 1.1]

I believe the oil will be recovered. The progressives play the greenies for all they are worth. Even the marxists (Dims) know that things are going down the tubes and that cheep/exported energy is a simple way to get the economy moving in the right direction. Not one of them wants to be powerful in a broken country, weo the DPRK. Nope, the EPA will make new regulations that will not stand up in court to stop the process. This is the fig leaf for the administration. The courts will overturn the regulations. The pubbies will be blamed. And the greenies will have something to protest. A win-win-win. There is only one possible hitch in this, and every once in a while you get to see it. The dim voters actually believe the nonsense. IMHO the stakes for the libtards are just too high so fracking and drilling is going to happen.

[thackney]

Every week we seem to get news of a huge new shale reserve, the Cline, Monterey, others in Mexico, Australia, on and on.
Do you have any sense about if and when this (supposedly) burgeoning availability will cause the price and the boom to collapse?

I see them more as updates on the same dozen or so new plays for the last couple years.

One issue with these tight formations is the drop in production rates is rather severe. For example in the Bakken:

Source for Graph:
North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/presentations/WBPC2011Activity.pdf

With these production rates, you have to keep drilling constantly just to hold the total production rate at a constant. It takes a lot of drilling to make significant increases.

So getting another thousand wells drills isn't going to make the price plummet. It takes a lot of money to drill these deeper formation with long horizontal laterals. And it takes time, once you are working on the second 500, the first 500 are in significant decline of flow.

[crosshairs]

Hussein doesn’t want us energy independent because he wants to U.S. to continue to be under servitude and continue to pay his muzzie cohorts in the M.E.

[Vaduz]

Guess where California’s powerful environmental groups and Obama will take land for solor farms?.

[Fightin Whitey]

Good answer thanks.

I had previously seen the production drop-off data for the Bakken and that’s a good point.

We make our livelihood in the area and, as you know, it is impossible not to live the life that is being lived in a boom area, at least to some degree.

I don’t mean that one goes hog-wild...but the entire region is hog-wild and you have to adapt your business & business plan to the incredible pace.

The problem is of course that someday it will end, or at least slow considerably. That’s what booms do. We were all around during the 80s boom and one day the engines were roaring and then next day the crickets were chirping.

But this one...the 80s boom was fun and wild (and we were all young too) but this one is magnitudes larger, richer, scarier, much more prosperous and more perilous in every way.

Life. You gotta...be in awe of it.

[PIF]

“And 0bama will make sure to sell these resources to China.”

Already included in the US trillion dollar debt repayment package, as well as everyother natural resource under US control - catalogued and inventoried by the lender. Also the former US gold supply, including that stored here by other counties, has been “leased” out to parties unnamed, but rumor has it that the party’s name begins with a ‘C’.

We are owned, just the word has not gotten out yet. No one really thinks it is possible to produce our way out of that much debt - do they?

[ckilmer]

Do you have any sense about if and when this (supposedly) burgeoning availability will cause the price and the boom to collapse?
...........
I have read online that globally—supply won’t outstrip demand before 2015.

There is very big supply coming online but also a steep drop off of current supply is projected.