The Golden State may become the oil state.
Sitting on top a massive amount of shale oil, California could become the next oil boom state, CNNMoney reports.
California's Monterey Shale, which runs from Los Angeles to San Francisco, may hold over 400 billion barrels of oil, almost half the conventional oil of Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It's enough to transform the state's economy and balance the state's budget.
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The problem is getting the oil out of California's problematic geology and overcoming environmental hurdles.
The San Andreas Fault has crunched geological layers like an accordion. That makes extracting oil with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, methods typically used for shale oil drilling, difficult.
Still, the U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates 15 billion barrels can be extracted with today's technology.
"That's a huge number," Matt Woodson, an analyst at energy research firm Wood Mackenzie, tells CNNMoney.
An even tougher hurdle may be environmental regulations and environmentalists, who say fracking, which involves injecting huge amounts of water, sand and chemicals under high pressure into the earth to break up shale, contaminates the air and groundwater.
California recently proposed a "discussion draft" for fracking and drilling regulations, including rules for preventing leaks, storing wastewater, monitoring wells and releasing information about fracking.
The Center for Biological Diversity says the proposed rules do little to protect the environment.
“California faces huge environmental risks unless state officials halt this dangerous fracking boom," says Kassie Siegel, director of the center's Climate Law Institute. "These draft regulations would keep California's fracking shrouded in secrecy and do little to contain the many threats posed by fracking.”
Current California law already outlines requirements for subsurface injection that would preclude fracking, but the new regulations would remove fracking from those rules, the center asserts.
“Because fracking is not allowed under the current but unenforced regulations, this proposal is worse than nothing,” Siegel says.
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