[ROCKMAN]

Pops - "The oil age didn't end for a lack of rocks". But it could: just have to castrate all geologists before they procreate.

[Pops]

Pops - "The oil age didn't end for a lack of rocks". But it could: just have to castrate all geologists before they procreate.

LOL, very good Mr. ROCK

Should we similarly discount the likelihood that the EIA's future oil production estimates will be right?

My thought exactly. Lots of feet shuffling and hem hawing going on sounds like. Notice the quote of the day.

"We knew it all along, yeah, that's the ticket!"

[ROCKMAN]

Pops - "...but a WAG is the shale has already been fracked by mother nature". And that's exactly where the story gets very complicated. The hottest oil play on the Planet in the 90's was the Austin Chalk fractured carbonate shale in Texas. And the key to success was finding those fractures created by Mother Earth. Some frac'ng but nothing like what's going on today. I don't know enough about the MS so I can only point out the key questions but don't have the answers.

First question: the shale is a source rock but it has to go through a burial and thermal process. Essentially the oil generation window. Was the MS naturally fractured before or after the oil window? And that answer has a geographic component: not the same for timing for all areas. Depends on when the tectonic activity happens. And then there's the geochemical history: if the rock is fractured and ground waters migrate thru the fractures before the oil window minerals can grow from the migrating fluids and plug the fractures preventing oil from filling them. Or the minerals can partially fill the oil filled fractures later and inhibit the producibility. And then there's secondary tectonic activity that can breach the original oil filled fractures with younger fractures/faults and allow the oil to leak out of the original trap. In fact, geologists that have studied that general phenomenon believe the vast majority of oil generated on the entire planet has leaked all the way to the surface. Think La Brea tar pits.

And if that's not complicated enough there's Deep burial below the depth where temps crack the oil to NG or actually cooks it into dead carbon. And then thanks to the tectonic complexity can lift the rocks back shallow depths where you wouldn't suspect burned oil dead oil.

Do you know the acronym 'FUBAR'...F*cked Up Beyond All Recognition. It was actually coined by a CA geology many years ago describing some very screwed up rocks he was working on.

[steam_cannon]

I'm currently drilling my second horizontal well to recover residual oil from a trend that has already produced 4.5 billion bbls of oil. Came up with the idea more than 10 years ago. A damn brilliant bit of work if I do say so myself.

It sounds brilliant! There's nothing quite like when plans and experience come together, and when opportunity allows those plans to take shape. Like in "the art of war", you don't have the perfect attack, often the best way to win a war or anything is to prepare and wait for the right openings.

Pstarr - No...this is the only group I deem worthy to share my brilliant observations. LOLLLLLLL. Heck...I couldn't publish anything I post here that wouldn't get me sued for plagiarism...

We walk a thin line. Hard facts are often too harsh for most people to handle and then there is the issue of when sharing becomes plagiarism and professional reputations. But it's good you share! These are issues that really need to be discussed and need the opinions of people with experience.

[TheDude]

As Hughes points out, they've already taken a crack at the Monterey:



Production included the usual battery of techniques - CCS, fracks, etc. There's just not much to be had, it's just a very rangy bunch of rocks, with manys the dips and folds and faults, compared to the rather homogenous plays being produced elsewhere.

Now, CA production is temporarily up a titch, with production levels back up to the halcyon days of, uh, 2010...well, you take what you can get. They also showed a bit of a plateau for ca. 5 years starting in 1995. Dunno what's behind the latest upsurge.

Meanwhile, Santa Cruz, Calif., bans fracking! Delusions of France. And like the Land of Cheese they don't produce much in the way of hydrocarbons in the first place so why should we care...

Santa Cruz on Tuesday became the first California county to ban fracking, the latest in a string of moves by local governments in the state to take a stand against the controversial oil and gas producing method.

Although San Cruz County does not have any oil or gas production, advocates said momentum for a ban took shape after reports surfaced saying that oil companies were exploring the possibly of fracking in neighboring San Benito county. Also, scenic Santa Cruz was the epicenter of the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake that killed more than 60 people in 1989.

Fracking has emerged as a top environmental issue in California. Its Monterey Shale formation contains an estimated 15 billion barrels of hard-to-reach oil, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Shale formations contain fine-grain sedimentary rock, which can be rich in oil and natural gas.

Woops, looks like someone needs to update their copy...

[Pops]

Thanks ROCK
--

Dude, I sometimes wonder whether I make myself overly pessimistic reading reports like Hughes' or whether reports like his make me realistic. Chalk one up to realism this time.

--
I made a google news feed yesterday but still haven't seen any MSM coverage by the big outlets. LA Times (who broke the story) did offer this in an editorial:

... The difficulties in drilling, fracking or otherwise tapping the shale's riches give California an important chance to pause and study the matter.

The Monterey Shale isn't going anywhere; petroleum companies, once they're closer to exhausting the more easily obtained oil in North Dakota's Bakken formation, will almost certainly work to develop the technology that unlocks California's oil deposits. But now there is time to observe the longer-term environmental and economic impacts of fracking.

Well, there is that.

--
Here is an article from KQED pretty balanced but with a little of the usual OilCo "Can-Do Spirit" mixed in.

This article talks about what ROCK was saying, that seismic activity may have already released much of the oil from the source rock, allowing it to rise and be trapped in pools under a non permeable rock layer (where it can and has been reached with conventional wells), or all the way to the surface where it erodes.

I think it is notable that the EIA and lots of the OilCos keep pointing to the fact that "the rock is still there" when in fact the rock may be there but most of the oil is already gone.

--
Here are a couple of blog posts from the chamber mouthpieces talking about exactly that, the rock is still there just waiting on the technology and price:

WSJ blog Post

Businessweek

--
I think the spin going forward will be "the rock is still there" which implies the 16B barrels are still there, this is just a postponement of the inevitable glut, all we need is the technology.

That sounds upbeat enough to make it to prime time, that's what Diane Sawyer will go with.

[westexas]

Ed Morse, et al's thoughts about the Monterey Shale Play in 2012 follow. Note that the only impediment that Ed Morse foresaw to California boosting production by one mbpd was the regulatory burden in California.

ENERGY 2020
North America, the New Middle East?

Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions
20 March 2012
http://www.morganstanleyfa.com/public/p ... a63cc2.pdf

The largest tight reserves could well be in California, with the EIA estimating over 15 billion barrels of technically recoverable reserves, several times greater than at least official Bakken and Eagle Ford reserves. The prospectivity of the region stems from the natural fracking that is caused by high levels of seismic activity in the geological faults in that state. The main prospect is Monterey/Santos shale, which has its own specific geological features, and is increasingly well understood through seismic imaging and drilling of exploratory wells. Venoco and Occidental, two of the major companies in Monterey, together completed California's largest ever 3-D seismic shoot. Drilling activity in this area increased throughout 2011, hitting 40 rigs in October, and up 100 wells in 2011 compared to the year before. Occidental was particularly active in drilling in the San Joaquin basin, finding that the geology, comprising many faults as a result of longstanding seismic activity, is best accessed through vertical wells with acid fracking. Use of vertical wells is more economic than horizontal drilling, and meant Occidental's completed well costs were only around $3.5 million. The geology of Monterey shale suggests lower initial production rates but also less steep decline curves compared to the Bakken. But California’s regulatory framework might well result in the projected potential 1-m b/d of incremental production for the state never being reached.

The US West Coast region includes shale oil plays in the San Joaquin and Los Angeles basins. Located within these basins is the Monterey/Santos shale oil play with a total area estimated at 1,752 square miles. Monterey, in particular, has an average EUR of 550-k bbls per well and approximately 15.42 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. Occidental reported vertical well costs of $3.5 million, and with EURs guidance from 400-700-k boe, total finding and development costs are around $7 to $8/boe.

[Pops]

Ah, here's the Guardian, a recognizable and PO "friendly" media source:

Write-down of two-thirds of US shale oil explodes fracking myth
Industry's over-inflated reserve estimates are unravelling, and with it the 'American dream' of oil independence

96% reserve downgrade undermines claims that fracking is solution to the world's energy needs.

Next month, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) will publish a new estimate of US shale deposits set to deal a death-blow to industry hype about a new golden era of US energy independence by fracking unconventional oil and gas.

EIA officials told the Los Angeles Times that previous estimates of recoverable oil in the Monterey shale reserves in California of about 15.4 billion barrels were vastly overstated. The revised estimate, they said, will slash this amount by 96% to a puny 600 million barrels of oil.

The Monterey formation, previously believed to contain more than double the amount of oil estimated at the Bakken shale, and five times larger than the Eagle Ford shale, both in Texas, was slated to add up to 2.8 million jobs by 2020 and boost government tax revenues by $24.6 billion a year.

Industry lobbyists have for long highlighted the Monterey shale reserves as the big game-changer for US oil and gas production. Nick Grealy, who runs the consultancy No Hot Air which is funded by "gas and associated companies", and includes the UK's most high-profile shale gas fracker Cuadrilla among its clients, predicted last year that:

"... the star of the North American show is barely on most people's radar screens. California shale will... reinvigorate the Golden State's economy over the next two to three years."

This sort of hype triggered "a speculation boom among oil companies" according to the LA Times. The EIA's original survey for the US Department of Energy published in 2011 had been contracted out to Intek Inc. That report found that the Monterey shale constituted "64 percent of the total shale oil resources" in the US.

Here's More . ..

[dsula]

Will that become accessible again once oil is $150?

[Pops]

It is a "technical" estimate, IOW, the amount extractable using current technology without regard to price: $100/bbl - $1,000bbl doesn't matter.

The hope, as usual, is that $1,000 causes some new technology to be developed.

But the bigger point I'm thinking about is that they really don't seem to know what amount of oil is actually down there, extractable or not. The line which keeps being repeated is "the rocks are down there..." referring to the source rocks.

How much oil is down there of course is the question.

[dinopello]

The line which keeps being repeated is "the rocks are down there..." referring to the source rocks.

How much oil is down there of course is the question.

Thank god. Think how screwed those poor people would be if the rocks weren't down there, holding up the surface.

Anyhoo, some of the players seem unfazed

“Whether there are 15 billion barrels or 600 million barrels or something in between, it’s still a lot of oil,” the company’s public affairs director, Susan Hersberger, wrote in an email. “We see potential and are in it for the long term.”

[Pops]

Now we're Spinnin' in our grave!

From Forbs of course - as I expected the spin is "the oil IS down there!" we just have to keep pumping the money down to get it.

Its' the Nigerian email scam, send us your life savings and we'll make you rich.

If We Judged The Monterey Shale By Green Energy Standards Then The 96% Cut In Rcoverable Oil Is Great News
Comment Now Follow Comments
An interesting report telling us that the amount of oil thought to be recoverable from the Monterey Shale has just been cut by 96%. This is taken as being something of a blow to employment prospects, to the economy of California and so on. However, if we were to judge this announcement by the same standards that are typically applied to green energy then this would be just absolutely great news. For it could be the trigger for the creation of many more jobs in the area and the industry. After all, there’s still exactly the same amount of oil there as there was before the announcement. All we’ve been told is that it’s going to be more difficult to get it out. And when we get told similar things about green energy, that wind, or solar, or lithium batteries or whatever will require more people to be employed to build them then everyone thinks that that’s just great! So, if it’s true with green, why not with oil?

[ROCKMAN]

Pops - "...may have already released much of the oil from the source rock." Actually decades ago they recognized that the MS was the primary source for much of the conventional oil production in CA. IOW much has already been squeezed out of it. Long ago I mentioned I did my grad thesis on a CA turbidite field in the SJ Basin. The MS encased those rocks and was the source of the oil for that field as well as all the others in that trend.

But clarify for me: did they say "technically recoverable reserves"? I read "resources" which are not normally considered technically recoverable until some history of recoverability is established. And then, as you say, economics have to be established to determine Economically recoverable reserves. So the life cycle goes: Resource...technically recoverable reserves...economic undeveloped reserves (we call PUD's - Proved Undeveloped Reserves)... proved developed producing reserves (we call "PDP"). PUD's and PDP's are not just some loose concepts. They are defined by law through the SEC and thus how public companies must report them. But there are no rules that require some fixed definition of "resources" or even "technically recoverable reserves". Which is why public companies love to toss them out: they require no proof and there are no repercussions if they are proved to be very inaccurate.

[Pops]

Heinberg is even going with the oil is still down there meme...

What happened to all those billions of barrels of oil? Of course, the resource is still there. The Los Angeles Times article quotes Tupper Hull, spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association, as responding, “We have a lot of confidence in the intelligence and skill of our engineers and geologists to find ways to adapt. . . . As the technologies change, the production rates could also change dramatically.”

[Pops]

But clarify for me: did they say "technically recoverable reserves"? I read "resources" which are not normally considered technically recoverable until some history of recoverability is established.

Actually they said technically recoverable resources, lol

Here from pg 75,
http://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/uss ... eplays.pdf

Located within these basins is the Monterey/Santos shale oil play with a total area estimated at 1,752 square miles. The reviewed play has an average EUR of 550 MBO per well and approximately 15.42 Bbbl of technically recoverable oil.

Here is their definition of EUR from pg 6:

The resource estimates shown in Table 1 were developed by INTEK from publicly available company data and commercial databases for wells and acreage currently in production. The estimates of technically recoverable resources shown in Table 1 are based on the area, well spacing, and average expected ultimate recovery (EUR) for each shale play or subportion of the play. An effective recovery factor has been applied which reflects: (a) a probability factor that takes into account the results from current shale gas activity as an indicator of how much is known or unknown about the shale play; (b) a recovery factor that takes into account prior experience in how production occurs, on average, given a range of factors (including mineralogy and geologic complexity) that affect the response of the geologic play to the application of best-practice shale gas recovery technology; and (c) resources in the play that have already been produced or added into proved reserves.

So EUR as defined by them (pg 6) is "Expected Ultimate Recovery" at current technology but not necessarily current price?

[Pops]

Heinberg is even going with the oil is still down there meme...

I don't see how you extract that from the article.

Because those are his exact words, LOL I quoted them, I didn't make them up.

The question is not are they recoverable at some price, the question is are they there at any price.