US Officials Cut Estimate of Recoverable Monterey Shale Oil By 96% 411
First time accepted submitter steam_cannon (1881500) writes "The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA.gov) is planning to release a major 96% reserve downgrade to the amount of oil and gas recoverable from the Monterey Shale formation, one of the largest oil/gas reserves in the United States. After several years of intensified exploration the Monterey oil shale play seems to have much less recoverable oil and gas then previously hoped. This is due to multiple factors such as the more complex rippled geology of the shale and over-hyped recovery estimates by investors. By official estimates the Monterey Shale formation makes up 2/3 of the shale reserves in the US and by some estimates 1/3 of all crude reserves in the US. Not a drop in the bucket. Next Month the EIA.gov will be announcing cutting it's estimates for Monterey by 96%. That's a huge blow to the US energy portfolio, trillions of dollars, oil and gas the US might have used for itself or exported. Presently the White House is evaluating making changes to US oil export restrictions so this downgrade may result in changes to US energy policy. As well as have a significant impact on US economy and the economy of California."
Good. (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe we'll have to start paying the actual, non-subsidized price for petroleum.
Keystone XL (Score:3, Insightful)
This could actually be good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Does this mean that we will need to find some other means of energy rather than burning dead dinosaurs? God forbid.
While this may impact the future economic situation to some degree and CA, it is not like the oil had been extracted and then taken away. The money was never there, it was only the assumption of future money.
I would also point out that the vast majority CA residents are strongly opposed to shale extraction off the coast of CA.
Re:Then/Than (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because the majority of Americans don't really get taught proper English in school any more, and they pretty much ignore what teaching they do get. But they still get to pass classes and graduate, because it would hurt their feelings to do otherwise.
I used to work at an outfit where the majority of my co-workers were immigrants, as well as a large proportion of our customers. The worst at English spelling and grammar in both groups by far were the people born and raised in the U.S. I never really knew whether to laugh at that or be depressed by it.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
LOL wut? You must live outside the US.
This announced change on estimated US (slash) California reserves will have little to no impact on the markets. It certainly might have an impact on the CA economy in the long term - but for the rest of us...not so much.
Monterey is a Global Treasure (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of fracking here just makes me wanna stop driving. I can't believe this project has been moving forward all of this time with FALSE DATA from the lying scumbag pigs that want money from resources no matter what the long term cost to the planet. This terrain is the result of tectonics for billions of years, and all some folks can appreciate is that the fault line makes it easier to dig, and the bay makes it easier to transport. In a thousand years there will be nothing worth remembering about this era except for the beauty that was spared from human destruction. Every one of us will be dead in a century, why is that momentary presence so arrogant as to exploit everything possible just because we can.
Life will go on without sucking the Monterey Shale out of the ground so that some people get rich selling old technology to the "free" market. Somehow, I'm sure they can just move along to some renewable energy to sell when the fast easy bucks dry up. Good thing we found out it is already dry here, before they poisoned the golden goose.
Re:Wait.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The energy trap has closed. 40 years ago was the time to act.
That would only be true if it would take more that 40 years to replace all of a countries electricity generation by nuclear.
And we know that's not true, it can be done in 26 years.
(In 1974 France decided that it would transition to nuclear for electricity generation. The first new reactor came online end 1981, the last of 58 came online in 2000).
Bubble, bubble... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps this is a sign that the rumoured Shale bubble is beginning to burst.
Re:Wait.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The stupidity of ignoring nuclear fission never ceases to amaze me. Fusion is still a long way from practicality, will always expensive and isn't the clean dream - the massive neutron flux just makes even more radioactive waste. The oil & gas are going to run out one day, be it in 5 years or 50. Renewables are unreliable, expensive and the quantities of rare earths required make for horrible mining pollution as well as covering the landscape with ugly windmills and solar collectors.
High activity nuclear waste is a small volume storage problem and if we hadn't wasted the last 30 years we would have modern fission plant designs far safer than any of the chemical polluting shit we have now.
Fricken' ridiculous.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Keystone XL (Score:4, Insightful)
More tax breaks for the oil companies next year? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wonder how much more of a tax break the oil companies will get because of this. My understanding is that they get a write-off as they deplete a reserve. It is sort of like a capital depreciation. I wonder if the reserve estimate will change that calculation resulting in larger tax breaks since they will have a depleted their asset at a faster rate than previously expected.
Re:Keystone XL (Score:3, Insightful)
That's currently roughly 12% of world energy production, for roughly 6 billion people, with many in dire poverty and quite low energy consumption.
I teared up a bit.
But hey, lets propose solutions that don't exist yet rather than one that's already offset more CO2 contribution than we can hope solar and wind will in the next 10 years. Gathering solar wind? Yeah, lets do that while many are in dire poverty.
We need realistic and practicable solutions that we can afford. There are plenty of ways to keep the nuclear fuel supply for hundreds of years. By then, maybe we'll have your solar windmill.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
The luddites think its icky and we can all just use windmills. Don't ask me how they think they'll ever get a jet off the ground using solar, but I don't think they've even thought that far into it.
This isn't about ludditism. This is about what year is it? We can fly the planes on biofuels, but we should replace all air within a nation with high-speed rail. Which we should fucking have already, because what year is it? We should be running our planes on biofuels already, because what year is it?
We've had solar panels since the 1970s and they could repay their energy investment in seven years back then. Now it's three. What year is it?
Re:Keystone XL (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're saying that you support expensive energy, and further with that creating misery for those who can't afford cheap energy?
He's saying that "cheap energy" is a delusion - one fostered with temporary geological realities and utter lack of regard for any externalities - and that the sooner you snap out of that delusion, the better for everyone involved.
Curious claim about shale oil reserves (Score:3, Insightful)
By official estimates the Monterey Shale formation makes up 2/3 of the shale reserves in the US and by some estimates 1/3 of all crude reserves in the US
What about the Green River shale formation which is estimated to have 3 TRILLION barrels of oil? I don't get how that 13.7 billion barrels originally estimated in the Monterey formation comprised 2/3rds of the shale reserves, when we have a 3 TRILLION barrel reserve. By my count, it's around 1/3rd of 1 percent.
Re:Keystone XL (Score:5, Insightful)
If that truly was a concern for the pro-petroleum folks then why do we export so much of our gasoline and keep our domestic price high? FYI, the Keystone XL pipeline goal is to move the crude oil to refineries on the gulf coast for export.
If we want to take the long view and lower the cost of energy for everyone we need to spend more money toward finding alternative and more abundant sources of energy. This short-term strategy of keeping the status-quo and using the current stock of "cheap energy" does nothing but make petroleum investors rich, further damage the environment, and delay the inevitable to the point where the poor will suffer even more than they supposedly do today.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why people "favouring individual liberty, free trade, and moderate political and social reform" should have any such opinion.
That is not what "liberal" means in American English. In America, a liberal is what Europeans would call a progressive or a social democrat. What Europeans call a liberal, would be a libertarian in America. In Australian English, "liberal" means conservative.
Re:Curious claim about shale oil reserves (Score:4, Insightful)
The green river shale is a different kind of thing. The monterray and Bakken shale formations contain actual oil, the Green River formation contains kerogen -- a waxy substance that will turn into oil if you heat it to several hundred degrees for a period of years (yes years).
The best analogy I have heard to put this into perspective is that the Bakken is something like a rock that has been left soaking in a bucket of oil for a while and the oil has seeped into the pores of the rock. The green river shale is more like a brick that has had candle wax dripped on it. Both contain energy which can be extracted, but one yields oil directly whereas the other is merely a feedstock to make oil.
The last I had heard, no one has ever made a commercially successfull attempt to convert kerogen into oil. It can be done, just not anything like economically, and the environmental costs of doing so would be massive. Now of course the "free market" folks will say, "well the price will just rise until the kerogen is extractable", and they are right, the price will rise to something like 1000 dollars per barrel, and then we will have lots of that "cheap" green river shale oil available on the market, something like 3 trillion barrels worth.
-AndrewBuck
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not what "liberal" means in American English. In America, a liberal is what Europeans would call a progressive or a social democrat.
While that is technically true, it's mostly just used as a curse word now for those conservatives who have no concept of compromise and do not understand the difference between opinion and fact. It's one of about a dozen words that mainly serve to make these stupid conservatives angry, a list that also includes words like "socialism" and "taxation." Sadly there are few words that actually make them happy, since that generally runs counter to the goal of conservative media with the obvious exception of schadenfreude. Their media go to great lengths to prolong anger and extract pleasure from the misfortune of those they call liberals. For example, they are still talking about the tragedy in Benghazi since, even though it obviously isn't working with swing voters, it keeps their base nice and angry and pliable.
Or, as Orwell called it, DuckSpeak. Why think about complex issues when you can slap around labels as fast as you can quack them?
Just get some Big Brother figure to chant the appropriate terms over the visi-screen or whatever.