shale oil – Page 2 – The Burning Platform

The Inverted ‘J-Curve’ In The Shale Patch—–Production Will Rise Before It Falls

The article below shows how important the shale oil boom has been to the US economy since 2009. It has accounted for a huge portion of employment and industrial production growth. The plunge in oil prices will bring this to an end, but it will be a two year relentless downturn as new investment dries up and the existing wells are depleted. We are in the Wile E Coyote phase of this wealth destruction. Gravity is a bitch.

Guest Post by Lee Adler

The November industrial production data reported yesterday shows no slowdown yet in US oil and gas production, and as goes oil and gas, so goes the US economy.

The Oil and Gas Production Index for November rose by 1.55 points to 161.04 (2007= 100). This is one of the rare series where there’s no seasonality, so I need not rant about the media not reporting the actual, not seasonally adjusted data like I usually do. In fact, the media doesn’t even bother to report the oil and gas production component index of industrial production, so, sadly, there’s nobody to harangue. I miss it.

The year to year gain was 11.5%. That’s a bit of deceleration from the peak growth rate of 13.9% that was hit in June, but it’s still not too shabby. The oil and gas drilling boom/bubble–whatever you want to call it–was still raging last month while prices were already collapsing.

The question is how long this can go on.

It may take a while for production to be shut in. Exploration activity will slow but the drilling that has started but is not yet producing will continue to come on stream. That’s because the bulk of production costs are in finding oil. Once found, the lifting costs are very low. Where the oil has been found or almost found, the drilling and production will go on.

The US EIA said that lifting costs of US oil in 2007-09 were less than $13/BBL. Inflation might have added a bit to that since then, but one of the big component costs is energy, and that will obviously be lower now. Taxes will also be lower.

Under any circumstances, the current lifting costs are still a long way below current market prices even after the crash. So it’s likely that wells that are being drilled will continue to come on stream for a while longer. Due to the short productive life of fracked wells, existing production falls off quickly, but there’s no evidence that is having an impact yet.

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The US oil boom should continue to contribute to the world wide oil glut for some months to come. While we may hear anecdotal reports of production shutdowns, the industrial production data should be the first hard data we get on that.

The oil and gas boom and its ripple effects throughout the entire energy and industrial complex have contributed mightily to overall US growth. Without the boom, US growth would look a lot more like the rest of the world, that is, moribund. Which leads to the questions, when the wells stop what happens to the US economy and…

What Becomes of the North Dakotans (with apologies to Jimmy Ruffin)

As I walk this field where I once grew beans,
I have visions of many things.
But the oil boom was just an illusion,
Trailed by bad debts and confusion.

What becomes of a broken market,
which had a boom that’s now departed?
I know we’re going to find,
A price where we can hold the line.
Maybe.

Drilling rigs grow all around
But for me they come a tumblin’ down.
Every day when the price goes much lower,
I want to stick my head in a snow blower!

I walk in shadows,
Searching for price lows.
Offers alone,
No buyers in sight.
Hoping and praying for someone who’ll cover,
Price is moving and goin’ lower.

(Refrain)

I’m searching though I don’t succeed,
For someone’s rigs, there’s a growing need.
All is lost, there’s no place for beginning,
All that’s left is an unhappy ending.

(Refrain)

I’ll be searching everywhere,
Just to find some gas to flare.
I’ll be looking everyday,
I know I’m gonna find a play.
Nothings gonna stop me now,
I don’t want no farm to plow.
I’ll be searching everywhere…

Get the facts. Follow Lee Adler’s chronicling of the market manipulating machinations of the Fed, Primary Dealers, the US Treasury, other central banks, and other key financial indicators of market direction in the Wall Street Examiner Professional Edition.

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SHALE BUST HAS BEGUN WITH A FURY

In the last few days I’ve noticed a plethora of news stories from the usual suspects in the corporate mainstream media about how shale oil producers can still make a profit with oil selling for $66 a barrel. All of a sudden their breakeven costs are supposedly $40 per barrel or lower. That’s funny, because every legitimate estimate prior to this year was that oil needed to stay above $80 per barrel just so they could breakeven. When you see the new propaganda, you realize the entire shale miracle is nothing more than a Wall Street hyped debt financed Ponzi scheme. The Wall Street shysters are sending out their mouthpieces to lie, obfuscate, and mislead the public into thinking this fraud is still legitimate. The MSM pundits don’t even question the lies because their living depends upon perpetuating the lies.

The truth is revealed by the actions of the participants in the shale boom. The companies whose existence depends upon generating profits and cash flow will always take actions that will be in their own self interest. No company purposely takes actions to lose more money. All of the happy talk was just revealed to be false.

New shale oil wells are expensive to begin and are 90% depleted after 2 years. Those are facts. Permits for new wells absolutely COLLAPSED in November. A 40% decline in one month is an epic collapse. If the Wall Street shysters were telling the truth and breakeven costs are really $40 per barrel, why would drillers stop drilling new wells when oil prices are $66? They wouldn’t.

The shale oil boom is only sustainable at $100 a barrel oil. The Arabs know it. The big oil companies know it. The drillers know it. And the Wall Street shysters know it. The peak in U.S. oil production has arrived again, until prices go back up to $100 a barrel.

Facts don’t cease to be facts because they are ignored. Reality really is a bitch.

Exclusive: New U.S. oil and gas well November permits tumble nearly 40 percent

Tue, Dec 2 2014

By Kristen Hays

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Plunging oil prices sparked a drop of almost 40 percent in new well permits issued across the United States in November, in a sudden pause in the growth of the U.S. shale oil and gas boom that started around 2007.

Data provided exclusively to Reuters on Tuesday by industry data firm Drilling Info Inc showed 4,520 new well permits were approved last month, down from 7,227 in October.

The pullback was a “very quick response” to U.S. crude prices, which settled on Tuesday at $66.88 CLc1, said Allen Gilmer, chief executive officer of Drilling Info.

New permits, which indicate what drilling rigs will be doing 60-90 days in the future, showed steep declines for the first time this year across the top three U.S. onshore fields: the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford in Texas and North Dakota’s Bakken shale.

The Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico showed a 38 percent decline in new oil and gas well permits last month, while the Eagle Ford and Bakken permit counts fell 28 percent and 29 percent, respectively, the data showed.

That slide came in the same month U.S. crude oil futures fell 17 percent to $66.17 on Nov. 28 from $80.54 on Oct. 31. Prices are down about 40 percent since June.

U.S. prices fell below $70 a barrel last week after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to maintain output of 30 million barrels per day. Analysts said the cartel is trying to squeeze U.S. shale oil producers out of the market.

Total U.S. production reached an average of 8.9 million barrels per day in October, and is expected to surpass 9 million bpd in December, the highest in decades, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Gilmer said last month’s pullback in permits was more about holding off on drilling good locations in a low-price environment than breaking even on well economics.

“I think in this case this was just a quick response, saying ‘there are enough drill sites in the inventory, let’s sit back, take a look and see what happens with prices,'” he said.

In addition to the Permian, Eagle Ford and Bakken, about 10 other regions tracked in Drilling Info’s data showed declines as well. The Niobrara shale in Colorado and Wyoming saw a 32 percent decline in new permits, while the Granite Wash in Oklahoma and Texas and Mississippian Lime in Oklahoma and Kansas retreated 30 percent and 27 percent, respectively.

Gilmer said the pullback in new permits is a precursor to a decline in rigs. The U.S. land rig count has been largely flat since September, hovering around 1,860 oil and gas rigs, according to Baker Hughes Inc (BHI.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

“This will show up,” he said. “I expect we’ll start seeing rig impact in a couple of months.”

Share prices of drillers including Patterson UTI Energy Inc (PTEN.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Helmerich & Payne Inc (HP.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Nabors (NBR.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) were slightly lower on Tuesday.

(Reporting By Kristen Hays; Editing by Terry Wade and Alan Crosby)

19 US Shale Areas That Are Suddenly Endangered, “The Shale Revolution Doesn’t Work At $80”

Enjoy the sub $3.00 gas prices while they last. The Saudis know what they are doing. Oil was $25 per barrel and gas prices were below $2.00 when the Saudis took down the twin towers. Know your enemy.

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/26/2014 15:41 -0500

Despite the constant blather that lower oil prices are “unequivocally good” for America, we suspect companies working and people living these 19 Shale regions will have a different perspective…

Drilling for oil in 19 shale regions loses money at $75 a barrel, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Those areas pumped about 413,000 barrels a day, according to the latest data available from Drillinginfo Inc. and company presentations.

“Everybody is trying to put a very happy spin on their ability to weather $80 oil, but a lot of that is just smoke,” said Daniel Dicker, president of MercBloc Wealth Management Solutions with 25 years’ experience trading crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange. “The shale revolution doesn’t work at $80, period.”

Source: Bloomberg

How Long Can The Shale Revolution Last?

Submitted by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

A new study has cast serious doubt on whether the much-ballyhooed U.S. shale oil and gas revolution has long-term staying power.

The U.S. produced 8.5 million barrels of oil per day in July of this year — 60 percent more than just three years earlier. That is also the highest rate of production in three decades.

Put another way, since 2011, the U.S. has added 3 million barrels per day in additional capacity to global supplies. Had that volume not come online, oil prices would surely be much higher than they currently are.

That has “revolutionized” the energy industry and geopolitics, as scores of energy analysts have claimed. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that U.S. oil production will hit 9.6 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2019, and gradually decline to 7.5 million bpd by 2040.

This would allow the U.S. to be one of the world’s top oil producers for an extended period of time. With such an achievement now at hand, many analysts are predicting an era of American dominance in geopolitics. For example, in an op-ed on Oct. 20, columnist Joe Nocera considered a “world without OPEC,” in which U.S. oil production soon kills off the oil cartel.

Or consider this rather triumphalist piece in Foreign Affairs from earlier this year, where two former National Security Council members who worked under President George W. Bush boasted that the recent surge in oil production “should help put to rest declinist thinking” and “sharpen the instruments of U.S. statecraft.” In the following issue, Ed Morse of Citibank went further. “Despite its doubters and haters, the shale revolution in oil and gas production is here to stay,” he declared.

But a new report throws cold water on the thinking that U.S. shale production will be around for the long haul. The Post Carbon Institute conducted an analysis of the top seven oil and top seven natural gas plays, which together account for 89 percent of current shale oil production and 88 percent of shale gas production.

The report found that both shale oil and shale gas production will peak before 2020. More importantly, the report’s author, David Hughes, says oil production will decline much more quickly than the EIA has predicted.

That’s largely because of high decline rates at shale wells across the country. Unlike conventional wells, which can produce relatively stable rates for a long period of time, shale oil and gas wells experience an initial burst of production in the first few years, followed by a precipitous decline thereafter.

Hughes estimates that the average shale oil well declines at a rate of between 60 and 91 percent over three years. Wells in the Bakken decline by 45 percent per year, which stands in stark contrast to the 5 percent annual decline for an average conventional well.

Or put another way, oil and gas companies will have to keep drilling at a feverish pace just to stand still. This means the industry is on a “drilling treadmill” that will be unsustainable over the long-term.

Predicting what oil production will be in 25 years is difficult, to say the least, but the Post Carbon report projects that oil production from the Bakken and Eagle Ford will be just one-tenth of the level that EIA is forecasting. The EIA predicts that the Bakken and the Eagle Ford will be producing a combined 1 million bpd in 2040. Hughes thinks it will be just a small fraction of that amount – a mere 73,000 bpd.

This is not the first time that David Hughes has taken aim at EIA data. In a December 2013 report, he skewered the high estimates for the potential of the Monterrey Shale in California, calling the EIA’s numbers “simplistic and highly overstated.” Several months later, the EIA was forced to back track on its figures, downgrading the recoverable oil estimates in the Monterrey by 96 percent.

Hughes says the implications of getting it wrong are “profound,” since so many companies are basing very large investments on incorrect projections. He says rosy estimates have cut into investment for renewables, while steering capital towards expensive oil and gas export terminals that should now be called into question.

An article in CleanTechnica points to the possibility of boom towns turning into “ghost towns” if the pace of drilling drops off. If David Hughes and The Post Carbon Institute are correct, there could be quite a few ghost towns popping up in the coming years as the shale revolution begins to fizzle.

* * *

Full Report below:

Drilling Deeper: A Reality Check on U.S. Government Forecasts for a Lasting Tight Oil & Shale Gas Boom

Average:

ADMIN WAS WRONG

I believe I made a statement in a post or comment a few months ago that we would never see gasoline below $3.00 per gallon ever again. Well, last week I saw gasoline advertised for $2.95 per gallon. Peak cheap oil must be a false storyline. Facts must no longer matter.

Read it here first.

I WAS WRONG

Make sure you take a screen shot. It might never happen again. I mean it might be the last time you ever see me admit that I was wrong, with the likes of SSS, Llpoh, and Stuck ready to pounce on any sign of weakness.

I failed to anticipate a drastic global economic slowdown and the lengths to which Obama and Saudi Arabia would go to try and destroy the Russian and Iranian economies. The energy independence crowd is crowing that the shale oil miracle has achieved nirvana for the American people. There is one law that works the majority of the time – supply and demand.

The reason prices have crashed is because worldwide consumption has stopped growing due to recession in Europe, stagnation in the U.S., and a slowdown in China. There has been no dramatic increase in supply. Adjusted for population growth, the number of miles being driven by vehicles in the U.S. are are at the same level they were in 1995, and down 9% from the 2005 peak. This is not due to engine efficiency. Gas guzzling pickups, SUVs and sports cars still acount for 75% of vehicle sales. The vehicle miles have declined because commerce has been reduced, requiring less trucking, and people without jobs don’t have to drive to work.

Normally, OPEC would cut production to maintain prices above $90 per barrel when demand softened. This time, backroom deals with the U.S. and EU, have kept Saudi Arabia pumping oil at high levels. The plan is to make Putin and Iran pay for their unwillingness to cooperate and bow down to the American Empire. The unintended consequences of this act of economic warfare could be considerable. In the short-term OPEC collusion with the American Empire can cause economic pain to Russia and Iran. One problem. The Russian and Iranian people are used to hardship. They’ll deal with it.

In the long-run Saudi Arabia and 90% of the oil producing countries need oil prices in excess of $90 per barrel or their people will get restless. And we all know what happens when Muslims get restless.

Obama’s master plan to crush Putin will fail. But he may succeed in derailing his shale oil boom. These wells already deplete at a rate of 90% after two years. In order for companies to invest the millions required to begin a new well, they need an oil price in excess of $80 to consider starting the well. This morning, oil dropped below $80. No investment in new wells = rapid decline in shale oil output. The miracle dies.

I may have been wrong about gasoline dropping below $3.00 per gallon, and I’m certainly enjoying the $15 per week in savings, but it won’t last long. Supply and demand will reassert itself in the near future.

FRACKED UP

There is no doubt that fracking stopped the long-term decline in U.S. oil output. Since the all-time low output in 2006, daily oil production has increased by 30%. Natural gas production has soared even higher, but seems to have leveled off. Ignoring the environmental impacts of fracking, just the economics alone show that shale oil and gas are not the miracle that will save us from the perils of peak cheap oil. Fracking extraction of oil is extremely expensive. If oil prices were to fall to $80 per barrel, there would be no profits for frackers. They would stop drilling wells. So don’t plan on ever paying less than $3 per gallon for gasoline ever again.

Other inconvenient truths about fracking are self evident, but covered up by the MSM and Wall Street shysters.

To maintain production of 1 million barrels of oil a day from Iraq one needs to drill just 60 new wells a year. Extracting the same amount from the Bakken would require 2,500 new wells.
A typical fracked well poked in the ground in Oklahoma in 2009 debuted with an output of about 1,200 barrels of oil per day. Just four years later, however, output from the same well has fallen to just 100 barrels of oil per day.
To double that output from the Bakken, for instance, would require 5,200 new wells a year, and tripling it would require 7,800 and so on. Then, to the horror of all, less than a decade after all that was done, that additional million barrels of oil a day in production would be reduced to just 100,000, no matter what the oil companies do, because of the nature of the formation where the well was drilled.
California’s Monterey Shale, which the U.S. Energy Information Agency thought contained 13.7 billion barrels of oil in 2011, came up a little light in the loafers. Closer examination revealed the formation to be much more broken up underground than previously thought — so much so that only around 600 million barrels may ultimately be recovered with current technology. That’s a 97 percent downgrade, and there is no guarantee that other rosy predictions of shale oil riches both in the U.S. and elsewhere won’t have similar outcomes.

The best fracking locations were selected first. As time goes on, the new locations will be less productive. The existing locations deplete rapidly. The shale oil and gas boom will be peaking out over the next few years. Don’t believe in miracles.

You will find more statistics at Statista

SHALE FRAUD CREATED BY WALL STREET

U.S. energy independence, we’re told, is at our fingertips thanks to the so-called “shale revolution”. Offsetting declines in conventional oil and gas production, shale gas and tight oil (shale oil) are being heralded as the means by which the U.S. will become energy independent – a net exporter of natural gas and once again the world’s largest oil producing nation. But two new reports by Post Carbon Institute and Energy Policy Forum show that the hype simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

KEY FINDINGS, SHALE GAS

High productivity shale gas plays are not ubiquitous: Just six plays account for 88% of total production.
Individual well decline rates range from 80-95% after 36 months in the top five U.S. plays.
Overall field declines require from 30-50% of production to be replaced annually with more drilling – roughly 7,200 new wells a year simply to maintain production.
Dry shale gas plays require $42 billion/year in capital investment to offset declines. This investment is not covered by sales: in 2012, U.S. shale gas generated just $33 billion, although some of the wells also produced liquids, which improved economics.

KEY FINDINGS, TIGHT OIL (SHALE OIL)

More than 80 percent of tight oil production is from two unique plays: the Bakken and the Eagle Ford.
Well decline rates are steep – between 81 and 90 percent in the first 24 months.
Overall field decline rates are such that 40 percent of production must be replaced annually to maintain production.
Together the Bakken and Eagle Ford plays may yield a little over 5 billion barrels – less than 10 months of U.S. consumption.

KEY FINDINGS, THE FINANCIAL PICTURE

Wall Street promoted the shale gas drilling frenzy which resulted in prices lower than the cost of production and thereby profited [enormously] from mergers & acquisitions and other transactional fees.
Industry is demonstrating reticence to engage in further shale investment, abandoning pipeline projects, IPOs and joint venture projects.
Shale gas has become one of the largest profit centers in some investment banks, in direct parallel with the decline of natural gas prices.
Due to extreme levels of debt, stated proved undeveloped reserves (PUDs) may have been out of compliance with SEC rules at some shale companies because of the threat of collateral default for some operators.
With natural gas prices far higher outside the U.S., exports are being pursued in an effort to shore up ailing balance sheets invested in shale assets.

AMERICA ENERGY INDEPENDENCE: NOW THAT’S SOME FUNNY SHIT

I love all those imminent American energy independence propaganda stories reported by the corporate media, paid for by the energy industry, and stated as fact by corrupt bought off politicians across the land. The shale oil miracle is the biggest scam in energy history. The boobs spouting about shale oil saving America either have IQs of 75 or are being paid off by Wall Street shysters or the energy industry.

The nitwits spouting this gibberish always ignore the terms RECOVERABLE and ENERGY RETURN ON ENERGY INVESTED. How convenient. The story below blows a gaping hole in the bullshit spouted by these hacks and scam artists. The Monterey Shale Oil deposits were touted as saving America and generating millions of new jobs in California because it contained 67% of the entire country’s oil reserves.

One itsy bitsy problem revealed today – 96% of it is not RECOVERABLE, even with the fracking technology being employed in the Bakkan and Ford shale fields. Instead of 13.7 billion barrels of oil, we’ll be lucky to get 600 million of extremely expensive shale oil, if any at all. OOPS – missed by that much.

The boobs in Congress and in the White House will ignore these facts, just like they ignore how much energy and capital investment is needed to extract shale oil and gas. We get closer and closer to a 1 to 1 EROI. Once we reach that ratio, the game is up folks. Demographics and the depletion of cheap easy to access energy sources are leading to the Long Emergency and slow collapse of our society.

Storylines and propaganda will not change reality. Oil is $103 per barrel. All the talk of energy independence hasn’t changed the fact that you were paying $1.43 per gallon at the start of the Iraq War in 2003 and today you are paying $3.65 per gallon. What do you think you will be paying per gallon in 2020?

U.S. officials cut estimate of recoverable Monterey Shale oil by 96%

By Louis Sahagun

May 21, 2014, 12:00 a.m.

Federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil buried in California’s vast Monterey Shale deposits, deflating its potential as a national “black gold mine” of petroleum.

Just 600 million barrels of oil can be extracted with existing technology, far below the 13.7 billion barrels once thought recoverable from the jumbled layers of subterranean rock spread across much of Central California, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.

The new estimate, expected to be released publicly next month, is a blow to the nation’s oil future and to projections that an oil boom would bring as many as 2.8 million new jobs to California and boost tax revenue by $24.6 billion annually.

The Monterey Shale formation contains about two-thirds of the nation’s shale oil reserves. It had been seen as an enormous bonanza, reducing the nation’s need for foreign oil imports through the use of the latest in extraction techniques, including acid treatments, horizontal drilling and fracking.

The energy agency said the earlier estimate of recoverable oil, issued in 2011 by an independent firm under contract with the government, broadly assumed that deposits in the Monterey Shale formation were as easily recoverable as those found in shale formations elsewhere.

The estimate touched off a speculation boom among oil companies. The new findings seem certain to dampen that enthusiasm.

Kern County in particular has seen a flurry of oil activity since 2011, with most of the test wells drilled by independent exploratory companies. Major oil companies have expressed doubts for years about recovering much of the oil.

The problem lies with the geology of the Monterey Shale, a 1,750-mile formation running down the center of California roughly from Sacramento to the Los Angeles basin and including some coastal regions.

Unlike heavily fracked shale deposits in North Dakota and Texas, which are relatively even and layered like a cake, Monterey Shale has been folded and shattered by seismic activity, with the oil found at deeper strata.

Geologists have long known that the rich deposits existed but they were not thought recoverable until the price of oil rose and the industry developed acidization, which eats away rocks, and fracking, the process of injecting millions of gallons of water laced with sand and chemicals deep underground to crack shale formations.

The new analysis from the Energy Information Administration was based, in part, on a review of the output from wells where the new techniques were used.

“From the information we’ve been able to gather, we’ve not seen evidence that oil extraction in this area is very productive using techniques like fracking,” said John Staub, a petroleum exploration and production analyst who led the energy agency’s research.

“Our oil production estimates combined with a dearth of knowledge about geological differences among the oil fields led to erroneous predictions and estimates,” Staub said.

Compared with oil production from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas, “the Monterey formation is stagnant,” Staub said. He added that the potential for recovering the oil could rise if new technology is developed.

A spokesman for the oil industry expressed optimism that new techniques will eventually open up the Monterey formation.

“We have a lot of confidence in the intelligence and skill

of our engineers and geologists to find ways to adapt,” said Tupper Hull, spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Assn. “As the technologies change, the production rates could also change dramatically.”

Rock Zierman, chief executive of the trade group California Independent Petroleum Assn., which represents many independent exploration companies, also sounded hopeful.

“The smart money is still investing in California oil and gas,” Zierman said.

“The oil is there,” Zierman said. “But this is a tough business.”

Environmental organizations welcomed the news as a turning point in what had been a rush to frack for oil in the Monterey formation.

“The narrative of fracking in the Monterey Shale as necessary for energy independence just had a big hole blown in it,” said Seth B. Shonkoff, executive director of the nonprofit Physicians Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy.

J. David Hughes, a geoscientist and spokesman for the nonprofit Post Carbon Institute, said the Monterey formation “was always mythical mother lode puffed up by the oil industry — it never existed.”

Hughes wrote in a report last year that “California should consider its economic and energy future in the absence of an oil production boom from the Monterey Shale.”

The 2011 estimate was done by the Virginia engineering firm Intek Inc.

Christopher Dean, senior associate at Intek, said Tuesday that the firm’s work “was very broad, giving the federal government its first shot at an estimate of recoverable oil in the Monterey Shale. They got more data over time and refined the estimate.”

For California, the analysis throws cold water on economic projections built upon Intek’s projections.

In 2013, a USC analysis, funded in part by the Western States Petroleum Assn., predicted that the Monterey Shale formation could, by 2020, boost California’s gross domestic product by 14%, add $24.6 billion per year in tax revenue and generate 2.8 million new jobs.

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Via the LA Times