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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.

As a result of the San Andres fault, California's geologic layers are folded like an accordion rather than simply stacked on top of each other like they are in other Shale states. The folds have naturally cracked the shale rock, and much of California's current "conventional" oil production -- the third largest in the nation -- is thought to come from the Monterey.

But the folds mean recent advancements that have made shale oil and gas profitable to extract -- horizontal drilling combined with hydraulic fracturing -- don't work as well in California. It's hard to drill horizontally if the shale is not flat.

Still, the U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates there are over 15 billion barrels of oil that can be recovered using today's technology.

Several oil companies have put together research teams to work on the Monterey, said Katie Potter, head of exploration and production staffing at NES Global Talent, a company that recruits oil industry professionals.

Last month, the government held a lease sale to drill in the Monterey. While only a modest 18,000 acres were offered, they were all snapped up.

Occidental (OXY, Fortune 500), which is California-based and has long held acres in the Monterey, has had some success using a technology known as deep acid injection, said IHS's Trammel.

The process involves injecting hydrofluoric or other acids deep underground, where they eat away at the shale rock and allow the oil to flow. It's cheaper than fracking, said Trammel. And while it sounds ominous, it may not be as controversial, as the volumes involved are far less and it's not done under such pressure, he said.

Fracking could still become an issue, as it has in other states where it's led to fears over groundwater contamination, said Nathan Matthews, a Sierra Club attorney based in San Francisco. And there's no guarantee acid injection is much better.

Plus, there's air pollution, road congestion and other issues that go along with an oil boom.

Regulations or not, there's still no guarantee there will be an oil boom at all.

"It might not live up to its expectations," said Fadel Gheit, a senior energy analyst at Oppenheimer. "The industry has not concluded whether it's boom or bust." More at http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/14/news/economy/california-oil-boom/index
.html?iid=HP_LN&hpt=hp_t2]

Given how irresponsible oil companies are, what's happening in other places they're fracking, and how fracking may be on the way out anyway, NOT HERE!!

I think I'm going to be sick...

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There is ZERO evidence that fracking causes tremors, quakes, bad air, pollution, or a hazard or smell of any kind.

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Earthquakes triggered by fluids injected deep underground, such as during the controversial practice of fracking, may be more common than previously thought, a new study suggests.

However, researchers have long known that fluid-injection operations can trigger earthquakes. For instance, in 2006 one geothermal energy site triggered four earthquakes in Basel, Switzerland, ranging from 3.1 to 3.4 on the Richter scale. Fracking also appears linked with Oklahoma's strongest recorded quake in 2011, as well as a spate of more than 180 minor tremors in Texas between Oct. 30, 2008, and May 31, 2009.More at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/07/fracking-earthquake-conne_n_1
752414.html who live near natural gas wells are being exposed to elevated levels of several air pollutants, including the known carcinogen, benzene. That's the conclusion of a study from the Colorado School of Public Health. The study strongly suggests that a much closer look is needed at just how these pollutants are affecting people's health.

The report, based on three years of monitoring the air in Garfield County, Colorado, found a number of potentially toxic hydrocarbons in the air near the wells, such as xylene, ethylbenzene and toluene, chemicals known to cause respiratory and neurological problems. Garfield County has recently been the site of rapidly expanding gas development. More at http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/04/fracking-could-cause
-elevated-levels-of-air-pollutants-near-gas-wells/256158/ Environmental Protection Agency announced today that for the first time they have found evidence of groundwater pollution as a result of hydraulic fracturing.

The EPA discovered chemicals in a drinking water aquifer in west-central Wyoming. Residents were claiming that their well water reeked of chemicals, says Time.

“Samples taken from two deep-water monitoring wells in Pavillion, Wyoming, showed synthetic chemicals such as glycols and alcohols ‘consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids,’ the agency said today in an e-mailed statement,” reports Bloomberg. More at http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/fracking-causes-water-polluti
on-in-wyoming/1962 fracturing has raised environmental concerns and is challenging the adequacy of existing regulatory regimes.[56] These concerns have included ground water contamination, risks to air quality, migration of gases and hydraulic fracturing chemicals to the surface, mishandling of waste, and the health effects of all these, as well as its contribution to raised atmospheric CO2 levels by enabling the extraction of previously-sequestered hydrocarbons.[5][34][46] Because hydraulic fracturing originated in the United States,[57] its history is more extensive there than in other regions. Most environmental impact studies have therefore taken place there.Wiki

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