California’s San Luis Obispo County failed to pass a fracking ban on Tuesday, as early votes showed more than 56 percent saying “no” to the measure.
Reports from the county clerk’s office suggest that it could take a few weeks to compile all the votes on the measure, with most of the votes counted coming from mail-in ballots.
But is there really a cause for a ban on the drilling method?
Although oil drilling has taken place for more than a century near Los Angeles, it is highly questionable whether the big shale-oil and gas rushes seen in Pennsylvania, North Dakota, and Texas will ever be seen in the Golden State.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, uses a mix of water and sand to penetrate shale rock deep underground to release oil and natural gas. The drilling method has made the U.S. the world’s largest energy producer in the world in under a decade.
But California’s Monterey Shale region isn’t the easiest nut to crack, so to speak, when it comes to oil companies wanting to frack in the state. It is simply too deep and too expensive for oil companies to risk capital beyond exploratory wells.
Nevertheless, oil firms in the state such as Chevron have sunk millions to try to sink the Measure G ballot initiative in the last few months before Tuesday’s midterm elections. Under the measure, previously drilled wells could continue production, but no new wells could be drilled, and definitely no fracking wells.
The U.S. Energy Department’s most recent survey slashed by 96 percent the amount of oil previously thought to be economically recoverable from the state’s shale region. Instead of the 13.7 billion barrels of oil once thought to be recoverable from Monterey Shale, the Energy Information Administration said there are just about 600 million barrels.
