Steven Greenhut Says Bad Oil News Doesn’t Validate Environmentalists’ Fracking Ban Demand

Environmentalists are gleeful
at the news reported last week by the U.S. Energy Information
Administration that the amount of recoverable oil from California’s
Monterey Shale formation — predicted to be the nation’s largest
reserve of oil — is a whopping 96-percent below
original production estimates due to the state’s difficult
geology. In response, more than 100 environmental
groups signed a letter to the California Legislature calling
for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing and other “stimulation”
techniques that ultimately would be needed to develop this oil
field. They say the new estimates are “undercutting the misguided
rationale” for allowing fracking before more studies are done.
Steven Greenhut counters that the estimate does not change the
dynamics or the debate about hydraulic fracturing. There’s no less
oil in that vast geologic formation that largely lies underneath
the Central Valley and parts of the Los Angeles basin, people just
need the economic incentive to figure out how to extract it.

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