By John Seiler

The California fantasy is that energy magically will flow in abundance from windmills and solar panels, even when there’s no wind and at night.

The reality is that it’s old-fashioned “fossil” fuels that will continue to generate almost all our power for the next century. New discoveries in America and around the world are bringing online an abundance of new oil and natural gas supplies.

When they can, other American states are taking advantage of that, enjoying massive growth in jobs and tax receipts. North Dakota has been in the news because of its lucrative Bakken Formation.

But the Wall Street Journal notes today that Texas quietly has doubled energy production since 2005, maintaining its position as the top state oil producer. Meanwhile, California has stagnated, dropping to third place behind Texas, North Dakota and Alaska. Here’s a great chart:

Wall Street writes:

“More than 400,000 Texans are employed by the oil and gas industry (almost 10 times more than in California) and Mr. Smitherman says the average salary is $100,000 a year. The industry generates about $80 billion a year in economic activity, which exceeds the annual output of all goods and services in 13 individual states.”

And remember that living is a lot cheaper in Texas, and there’s no state income tax. Does California have better weather? Only along the coastal areas. But the new job growth, assuming our state ever gets its act together and starts drilling, would be in the inland areas that have crummy weather — and currently unemployment rates in some areas above 30 percent.

“More than 400,000 Texans are employed by the oil and gas industry (almost 10 times more than in California) and Mr. Smitherman says the average salary is $100,000 a year. The industry generates about $80 billion a year in economic activity, which exceeds the annual output of all goods and services in 13 individual states….

“A large part of the explanation for the Texas boom and the California bust is the political culture. Despite their cars, California voters have elected politicians who consider fossil fuels to be “dirty energy.'”

Right now, California state revenues unexpectedly are surging. But that won’t last once the Legislature gets to splurging.

Eventually, the California Teachers Association and other public-worker unions will give the marching orders: “We don’t care about the environment. We need the tax money for our pensions. Drill! Drill! Drill!”

By Chris Reed

The coming battle over fracking in California is going to be a doozy. There’s too much money to be made in the “brown energy” revolution for monied interests to not pursue the reserves in the Monterey Shale.

Soon to be the face of evil in California: Occidental Petroleum. As I wrote about last year, the company is already poised to pounce in the Central Valley:

“Even if California’s media haven’t caught on to the state’s potential for a Bakken-style economic boom, the oil industry has. By far the BLM’s biggest 2011 lease [for use of federal land for oil and gas exploration in California] was the $180,000 paid for a 200-acre parcel by Vintage Production California, a Bakersfield-based subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, the third-largest U.S. oil and gas producer. On Oxy’s website, it estimates the shale reserves on California land it already controls to have over 20 billion barrels of potential oil — a claim that the company says is made in accordance with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule that only ‘economically producible’ reserves can be cited in SEC filings.”

Now the Ventura County Star reports that Oxy, as it is known, is busy in the coastal county as well:

“Anticipating that new drilling techniques will make it possible to tap vast oil reserves thought to be unrecoverable, a Los Angeles-based oil company has been aggressively securing mineral rights beneath thousands of acres of Ventura County land.

“Documents filed with the Ventura County Recorder’s Office show that Vintage Petroleum, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, has entered into 192 lease agreements over the past six months in deals involving at least 9,000 acres.

“Most of the leases, largely on rural land in the Santa Paula-Fillmore area, were recorded during the last week of March.

“’They’re making a big play,’ said attorney Stuart Nielson, whose A to Z law firm in Oxnard has represented several of the lessors.

“Nielson said the pace of oil-leasing activity is unlike anything Ventura County — once a more prolific oil-producing area — has seen in decades. Most of the oil rights involved have long been dormant.”