In recent years, certain formations believed to be source rocks for petroleum, such as the Bakken/Three Forks in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford in Texas, have been developed for production as “shale oil” reservoirs by application of multistage massive hydraulic fracturing in thousands of longreach directionally drilled wells. The Monterey Formation is known to be a prolific oil source rock in several California basins, including Los Angeles, Salinas, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, and Ventura, leading to speculation that Monterey source rocks are also potential shale oil reservoirs. However, the geological setting and physical properties of the Monterey are quite different from other shale oil plays and little or no oil production from source rocks has yet been realized in California. Consequently, great uncertainty surrounds the potential for shale oil development from Montereyequivalent source rocks – in 2011 the EIA suggested that the "Monterey/Santos play” had 15.4 billion barrels of technically recoverable shale oil but in 2014 the EIA revised its estimate to a much lower value of 0.6 billion barrels. To better understand possible environmental and public health consequences of shaleoil production in California, we mapped the area of thermally mature Monterey source rocks in six basins that have large volumes of known oil. We found that about 8% of the area has already been developed for oil production and that the remaining 92% is less than 20 kilometers from an existing oil field. We evaluated potential environmental impacts by examining the source rock footprint in terms of water resources, air quality, seismic activity, and sensitive species and habitats. The greatest changes would be an increase in quantity of petroleum production and its associated impacts, and expansion of production into areas near existing oil fields.

Potential shale oil production in California and its possible environmental consequences

251st National Meeting (2016)

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