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The Solution To California’s Fiscal Problems

13 Comments

The California Monterey fields have four times the reserves of Bakken:

Harold Hamm (billionaire owner of Continental oil) estimates the Bakken oil field will produce six times (24 billion barrels) the oil of the EIA estimate. Harold Hamm also believes that the San Joaquin Monterey California fields are the next big horizontal drilling play.

So much for “peak oil.” Of course, the problem is that we don’t yet seem to have reached peak stupidity in Sacramento (or among the California electorate).

13 thoughts on “The Solution To California’s Fiscal Problems”

  1. Tapping this would be bad. Californians would think that extra revenue would mean they can spend more instead of cleaning up their debts.

  2. The roots of California’s fiscal problems is deep enough that developing in state oil resources won’t be enough. Then again, those resources will never be allowed to be developed so long as the mentality behind the fiscal problems prevails.

  3. The sun will run out of hydrogen before California’s environmentalists allow a drop of oil to flow in the San Joaquin valley.

    1. I used to drive up the middle of the San Joaquin valley on highway 33 quite often. And there are long stretches where it’s farms on one side of the road, and oil wells on the other. Not that the basic point isn’t valid, I’m sure there will be much screaming and wailing at the mere thought of fracking in California, and the fact that it’s far from pristine nature to begin with will not be mentioned at all.

  4. If horizontal drilling capabilities continue to improve, perhaps eventually Nevada could tap it without California having any say in it.

  5. Now wait a minute.

    Are you saying the Bakken has 24 billion barrels or 6 times an original estimate of 24 billion barrels.

    The United States uses 20 million barrels of oil per day. 24 billion barrels in rough round numbers is 1200 days or roughly one Presidential Term worth of oil consumption.

    Yeah, yeah Monterey thing is some multiples of Bakken, so it carries us through a few more Presidential Election cycles? I am not saying we are at Peak Oil or that we are in crisis or that we should not develop these resources. I am just saying to be dismissive of Peak Oil based on a few tens of billions of barrels of oil is to make the same error as the enviro-lefties do when they talk of “billions of tons of CO2 saved” without any reference to the percentage of the total amount.

    Not if there was some oil province to approach some large fraction of a trillion barrels, that would get my attention . . .

    1. OK, I decided in Slashdot speak to “read The Fine Article.” They are talking a quarter trillion for Bakken, a half trillion of Monterey — I know it is easy to talk inflated numbers, but numbers of that magnitude have my attention.

      But why the snark that a major oil province in CA would be bad, that California could grow its way out of debt rather than practice austerity. Is that the new post-Reagan political message, that people have to be punished with austerity for being liberals or paying pensions to prison guards? That we would be unhappy if they didn’t have to take their medicine?

      This is not the Conservatism of Ronald Reagan, and it forebodes ill for the Movement if that is what people are thinking.

      1. The snark is that California has huge natural resources that could solve many of their economic problems but they refuse to harness those resources to help themselves. Instead, they’ll likely be pushing for the rest of the country to bail them out of their own economic stupidity.

      2. Are you aware of how much those prison guards make? And how much their pensions are? I would say they could probably be cut quite a bit before anyone with half a brain would describe the result as “austere”.

      3. Paul, this oil will be like the “Gom Jabar” from Frank Herbert’s “Dune.” Nothing but pain, fear, and cold sweat, forced to chose between being maimed and being killed.

        They can drill it and the tax money can pay for all their public sector retirement benefits (Hurray!), but then they’ll all die of an oil spill. Or they could not use it and keep their environment pristine, but let their state economy collapse under the weight of all their public sector pensions.

        Extracting oil from the shale layers will require fracking, and Hollywood is already leading a campaign to stop all fracking everywhere. They claim that if there’s the tiniest chance that oil or fracking fluids could contaminate a water supply, drilling must be stopped. But they’ll have even more ammunition because the ground water that could be contaminated grows all the fruit and vegetables that are consumed by innocent little babies (and wine for Hollywood parties). If that’s not enough, they’ve already turned the valley into a wasteland by stopping irrigation to protect endangered minnows. Letting oil leech into what little water remains would be unthinkable. But their state is going bankrupt and desperately needs the money, and it would help ease the financial pain of all the farmers in the valley (on whose land the oil is found) who’ve seen their farms destroyed to protect the minnows. The California Assembly will run with blood!

        Anyway, someone should tell Victor Davis Hanson that not only do we need to Drill Baby, Drill, but we need to drill in his yard! ^_^

  6. Rand,

    And yet you decided to move TO California instead of staying away from it. It makes me wonder if you just enjoying finding things to complain about.

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