The U.S. Energy Information Administration took a fresh look on oil from the largest U.S. formation. It has placed a downward revision on its estimate of recoverable reserves from California’s Monterey Shale by 96 percent.
Thus, overall reserves of industrial oil dropped 36 percent. The Monterey Shale 2012 projection was 13.7 billion barrels. But now experts claim that unlike shale deposits in North Dakota and Texas, California’s Monterey Shale has been folded and shattered by seismic activity, with the oil found at deeper strata.
"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... Our oil production estimates combined with a dearth of knowledge about geological differences among the oil fields led to erroneous predictions and estimates", EIA petroleum analyst John Staub said.
Interestingly, this is not the first revision of oil reserves. In 2011 the EIA said there were 15.4 billion barrels, while in 2012 the estimate was cut to 13.7 billion barrels. Moreover, in light of this event, other long-term estimates of U.S. oil reserves are doubtful. The new analysis from the Energy Information Administration will be officially published in June 2014.
