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Is there any geological similarity between the Monterey Shale and the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, or is Monterey a one-off? From what basin do you think that technical unconventional expertise would be most useful for application to the Monterey Shale?

I personally do not know much about the Monterey other than it is the mother lode to most of the oil fields in California as far a source rock. It is siliceous and brittle and has produced from vertical wells as has most of the others. What I don't know is whether they are playing it in the right maturity window or in a highly-fractured or faulted area. Most of these plays work best in the ram pasture (i.e, ramp dip with little structural complications.) As far as the Tuscaloosa, its problem is that it is too diluted with clays from the ancestral Mississippi River and is pretty weak in total organic carbon. It also has a frac risk below from wet sands being present. It is also thinner than the Eagle Ford, which is its age-equivalent in Texas. Like most of these plays, the wells make oil but aren't commercial at $10,000,000 per well.

Not knowing what has been done to date, my only advice would be to get away from all the producing fields and the strike-slip faults to some nice ram pasture. Find some old vertical wells with either mud log shows or production tests of the right gravity oil and GOR. Find cuttings from the wells and test them for maturity. Make sure they have a vitrinite reflectance of at least 0.8 but not greater than 1.1, which is usually around 10,000' deep. Drill around a 5,000’ lateral and call out Dr. Fracenstein to do his dirty work.