What happened to CA oil exploration?

Good morning. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the return of NFL football this weekend and is excited about the Rams/49ers game tonight.

But that’s tonight. This morning we’re talking about oil. 

It took some time, but a 2011 report by the Federal Energy Information Administration that estimated that California’s Monterey shale underground land mass formation had 15.4 billion barrels of accessible oil and a follow-up study that put the figure at 13.7 billion barrels of oil — about twice as much as the rest of the nation combined — got plenty of folks’ attention.

Advances in hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, made extracting the oil cost-effective. … But it’s been all downhill ever since for those enthusiastic about oil exploration in the Golden State.

It’s not just that low oil prices have left energy companies facing a “world of hurt,” in the words of the Houston Chronicle, and without the resources to pursue large new drilling programs in California or elsewhere. It’s specific, daunting developments.

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

• “When key bills aimed at reforming the California Public Utilities Commission died last month, much of the blame was placed publicly at the feet of a Republican floor leader — someone not typically seen as a make-or-break figure in a Democrat-dominated Legislature. It turns out, the CPUC itself had some last-minute concerns about the overhaul that contributed to its demise.” The San Diego Union-Tribune has more.

• “In a sign that California’s pot initiative is getting national attention, a Pennsylvania millionaire has contributed $1.3 million to a nonprofit group that is raising money to oppose Proposition 64 on the November ballot,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, “California supporters of the statewide measure to legalize marijuana filed a complaint late Friday with the state’s political ethics watchdog alleging that an outside committee opposing Proposition 64 filed campaign finance reports months after the deadline,” reports The Sacramento Bee.

• The Orange County Register looks at the curious alliance between Republican Rep. Darrell Issa and Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez. The two Southern Californians are gambling on bipartisanship helping them through tough races.

• “Dr. Robert Sears is one of the leading voices in the anti-vaccination world, a hero to parents suspicious of childhood immunizations that public health officials say are crucial to preventing disease outbreaks. So when the Medical Board of California announced last week that it was moving to pull the Orange County pediatrician’s medical license, it immediately set the stage for a new battle in the long-running fight over whether schoolchildren should be vaccinated.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December.

Gov. Brown: 

• Presenting Medal of Valor to eight public safety officers in his Capitol office at 11 a.m. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @Sachealth

This is unacceptable to greens in California, who broadly reject the Obama administration’s conclusion that fracking is safe. Instead, they depict it as ruinous to the environment, as causing earthquakes and as using up enormous amounts of water that could be put to much better use.

The latter argument — because of its specific implications for drought-wracked California — is a constant presence on state message boards, letters to the editor and talk radio.

But some crucial research is rarely if ever cited. In a 2010 report, Harvard scientists concluded that energy produced by fracking appeared to use less water than the same amount of energy produced by conventional fossil-fuel extraction. “The increased role of shale gas in the U.S. energy sector could result in reduced water consumption,” wrote authors Erik Mielke, Laura Diaz Anadon and Venkatesh Narayanamurti. According to the energy industry, that’s just what has happened in the five years since.

Some big drillers no longer use freshwater

One reason is that technological advances have made it easier for drillers to recycle water than ever. This is from a 2013 Reuters story:

MERTZON, Texas, Nov 21 (Reuters) – At a dusty Texas oilfield, Apache Corp has eliminated its reliance on what arguably could be the biggest long-term constraint for fracking wells in the arid western United States: scarce freshwater.

For only one well, millions of gallons of water are used for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the process that has helped reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil over the past five years by cracking rock deep underground to release oil and gas.

In Irion County, where Apache is drilling dozens of Wolfcamp shale wells in the Permian Basin, the company is meeting its water needs for hydraulic fracturing by using brackish water from the Santa Rosa aquifer and recycling water from wells and fracking using chemicals.

The company’s approach could have broader significance for areas prone to drought. Apache, which has the most rigs running in the Permian, the oil-rich region that spans 59 Texas counties, says the model can cut costs and truck traffic rattling small towns stretched by the country’s drilling boom.

“We’re not using freshwater out here,” Lucian Wray, production manager for Apache’s South Permian region, said of the company’s Barnhart operating area, which is run out of a former hunting lodge. “We are recycling 100 percent of our produced water. We don’t dispose of any of it.”

“Produced water” is a byproduct of oil and natural gas drilling. “Flowback” water is the fluid pushed out of a well during fracking. Apache is recycling both types, which are typically trucked away and put into underground disposal wells.

Some drillers frack without water entirely

And some drillers have stopped using water entirely. This is from a 2013 Houston Chronicle story:

The use of one precious fluid — water — to recover another — oil — chafes in dry country. Rivers and groundwater are receding in Texas for lack of rain and over-pumping just when the demand for water in new oil and gas fields is growing.

Now one exploration and production company in San Antonio is fracturing its wells mostly without water, using gas liquids instead, in a practice that’s beginning to spread. …

BlackBrush Oil & Gas LP is using a butane-rich mix for fracking after being confounded by many of the same obstacles other energy companies face in buying, moving and disposing of large amounts of water.

“Ranchers don’t want to give up their water,” said Jasen Walshak, production manager at BlackBrush.

The term gas liquids refers here to three fluids – propane, butane and pentane – that occur together with natural gas. They’re extracted from natural gas and sold, mostly as fuels.

Switching to gas liquids also seems to reduce controversy for BlackBrush.

“People don’t see water transfer lines all over the place,” Walshak said, referring to the yards and miles of pipe that move water from rural wells to oilfield tanks and rig trucks.

Environmentalists concerned about fossil fuels and global warming are certain to see a downside to these new approaches to fracturing even if they lead to far less water use.

But at the least, these developments show that energy exploration firms are listening to their critics. They realize that it’s in their interest to counteract the gripes about water use that are a staple of much fracking criticism.

In Brea, residents started researching fracking, gathering information about polluted water wells and increased seismic activity in other areas across the country, such as Oklahoma, where scientists have linked wastewater injection wells with an increased number of earthquakes.

Initially, Fujioka – the Brea fracktivist – didn’t even know fracking was happening near homes and schools, but she soon found out using online mapping tools.

So, Fujioka scheduled a meeting before the City Council. It transformed into a presentation by the main driller in the region, LINN Energy.

At an alternative meeting, 100 residents showed up seeking information on fracking. Another meeting followed, this one sponsored by Cal State Fullerton and paneled by academics and industry representatives, at which 500 residents sought information.

Residents in other Orange County cities are joining the movement. At the very southern end of the hills, Yorba Linda activists are just getting started. Karen Hill, an active member of Brea Congregational United Church of Christ, an anti-fracking hotspot, believes fracking will contaminate groundwater near her community, even though most water is imported.

Given that the California media still refuse to report that the Obama administration considers fracking safe, this alarmism isn’t that surprising.

But what’s also interesting is that the international and national media increasingly have figured out that fracking has been profoundly good for the U.S. economy. This is from a Financial Times analysis of how cheaper energy was helping U.S. exporters:

The price gap has led to a 6 per cent average increase in US manufactured product exports, the IMF wrote in its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook. […]

Lower prices for natural gas favour energy- and gas-intensive industries, such as steelmaking, oil refining, and nitrogen fertiliser production. The International Energy Agency has previously warned that Europe will lose a third of its share of global energy-intensive exports over the next two decades because its energy prices will remain stubbornly higher than those in the US.

And then there’s this remarkable development. At a time when international opinion of the U.S. seems to be largely negative and even baffled — a president sending mixed messages for years will do that — fracking has created a positive aura around the U.S.

New York Times: Fracking ‘gust’ lifts U.S. reputation

Who says so? Lots of analysts and academics, including the Harvard professor who popularized the idea that nations wield not just military might but “soft power” that influences global opinion. This is from the New York Times:

It has become fashionable to note a decline of American global power and influence, but don’t tell that to the energy experts.

Many see increased domestic production of oil and gas as driving more muscular United States energy diplomacy, power that exists in curious tandem with the Obama administration’s efforts to wean the world off fossil fuels.

“The rapid rise in U.S. oil and gas production, together with the decline in oil consumption and the elevation of climate change as a priority, is completely scrambling the way policy makers think about energy diplomacy,” said Michael A. Levi, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Joseph S. Nye Jr., the Harvard professor who articulated the notion of “soft power” in international affairs, sees a “shale gale” propelling America’s status: “If you are attracted to a country or any leader, a lot has to do with the feeling, ‘Do they have momentum? Is the wind in their sails or are their sails flapping?’ We’ve got a gust.”

Carlos Pascual, a former senior American diplomat, agrees. Increased energy production “strengthens our hand.” he said.

Will California’s vast Monterey Shale ever be tapped to add to this U.S. momentum? I’m not optimistic. But if it does happen, it would produce more middle-class jobs for California than any dozen government initiatives.

And it would also yield vast new revenue. Which state has seen the sharpest percentage increase in education spending in recent years? The state that has the lowest unemployment and the fastest economic growth.

That would be North Dakota, global ground zero for the fracking revolution.

Now it’s taking the biggest step of all: Allowing foreign companies back in to drill for oil.

It was 76 years ago that Mexico’s government nationalized all oil production. It was a time when socialism was on the march globally: fascism in Italy; National Socialism in Germany; communism in the Soviet Union. The Mexicans especially didn’t like the meddling Yanqui, who had invaded their country as recently as 1914-17 — 21 years earlier.

But times change. Today, seemingly everyone with a backyard in North America is finding black gold. Neighboring Texas has doubled oil production in a decade. North Dakota can’t control the growth it’s enjoying from the fracking boom.

Wildcatters

The boom is largely being carried out by wildcatters, as told in “The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters.” It’s the profit motive. When government tries to find oil, it’s like putting the DMV in charge. Mexico is figuring that out.

According to Fortune:

In a move that has both shocked and thrilled the global oil industry, Mexico’s government is performing an about-face.

For the first time in three-quarters of a century, it intends to invite international oil firms into the country to sink their drills into its petroleum-rich earth. That decision has infuriated many Mexicans, and it fundamentally threatens Pemex, which has always been a monopoly. As the oil giants prepare to pounce, ]Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya], a Harvard-educated investment executive and an oil industry newcomer, has the task of whipping the bloated behemoth into competitive shape.

“It is, by all means, the most important transformation Pemex has suffered in our entire 76 years,” says the fresh-faced CEO, who speaks excellent English and chooses his words—including his verbs—deliberately. As he talks, he jots talking points onto a small white notepad that has been placed in front of his high-backed chair. By his right hand sits a red phone, a direct line to the office of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, the oil reform’s architect and Lozoya’s friend and boss. 

Jobs

It means plentiful new jobs and strong continuing prosperity for Mexico. That means the recent trend of net zero immigration to the United States from Mexico will continue. Indeed, I suspect many Mexicans will go back to enjoy the prosperity and the much lower cost of living. Why put up with median-price $750,000 homes in Southern California and $1 million in Silicon Valley? You can’t even smoke in bars in Puritan California anymore, something the more libertarian Mexicans still can enjoy.

An Anglo friend of mine moved to Baja last year and loves it. Same weather as Yanqui California, but you still can get a safe place on the beach. Everything else is cheaper, including the tequila. And you legally can get Cuban stogies.

Sure, you have to find places that don’t have violence. But it’s the same here. You avoid Detroit.

Time to Go South?

But this summer, we’re seeing something freaky. Prices are going down, even with unrest in many oil-producing nations and rising tensions throughout the Middle East. The Christian Science Monitor has the details:

The average US gas price is now $3.52 per gallon, according to a Thursday report released by automotive group AAA, making current prices the lowest since March of this year. This July, US consumers saw a bigger drop in gas prices than in any July over the last six years. The price at the pump fell every day but one over the course of the month, according to AAA. Gas prices generally rise in the summer months, as Americans hit the road and drive up demand for gas. The federal government also mandates that refineries produce a more costly, lower-emission blend of gas in the summer – and those increased costs are passed onto motorists. …

Though forecasters expected that expanded domestic oil production would translate into good prices for consumers, they couldn’t have predicted prices quite this low.

July gas prices drop by amount they usually increase

Gas prices have averaged going up 16 cents in July in the U.S. This July, they went down 16 cents.

The fracking revolution is real. The 21st century was supposed to be when green-energy sources took over from fossil fuels. But instead, fossil fuels are having a renaissance, almost entirely based in the U.S.

It’s why the U.S. is now the world’s leading producer of both oil and natural gas. It’s why a nation that used to consider energy independence a major foreign-policy goal could soon be on the brink of becoming a major exporter of oil and natural gas. And it’s why we see freaky things like plunging gasoline prices in the summer in a world of rising unrest and discord.

California could join in this Texas- and North Dakota-led revolution. Occidental Petroleum believes the state has more recoverable oil than Texas and North Dakota combined.

But so long as the green religionists control so much of state government, the Golden State is likely to stay on the sidelines — and only enjoy the indirect benefits of fracking: lower gas prices. Not the direct benefits of well-paying jobs and a revenue gusher.

Great. Just great.

“The biggest onshore story is the potential of the Monterey Formation (also known as the Monterey Shale), a zone of petroleum-rich rock that extends much of the state’s length. The Monterey holds an enormous amount of oil, estimated at up to 500 billion barrels. Though it has long been difficult to extract oil directly from it, advancing technology, along with rising oil prices, has put much more of its oil within reach. If even a small fraction of its reserves proves accessible, the Monterey would be the biggest shale oil play in the nation. In July 2011, the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated that the Monterey had 15.4 billion barrels of recoverable crude—four times what’s estimated to lie within the Bakken shale formation, which is fueling North Dakota’s current oil boom. Those 15.4 billion barrels would be worth about $1.5 trillion at today’s crude prices.

“The potential impact of 15.4 billion barrels of oil is enormous. Even if California managed to tap just half of that quantity over the next 35 years, the state would be adding an average of 220 million barrels a year—doubling its current output and matching its peak year of 1985. It would also be pumping $22 billion each year into its economy if crude prices stayed near their current levels (in light of global demand, it’s more likely that prices will rise). If the EIA estimate is reasonably close to the mark, the Monterey Formation would be in a class with oil fields in Saudi Arabia.”

Since then, Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation that sets the framework for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to be expanded in California to access this huge resource. But this has triggered a backlash from his fellow Democrats, and there are signs everywhere that a multifront legal war will be mounted on all aspects of any plan to sharply increase energy exploration in California, whether it involves fracking or not. The president, at least ostensibly, declares his support for an “all of the above” approach to creating additional energy for America. Not California liberals.

No better option for middle-class job growth

Too bad. Allowing California’s natural resources to be developed could trigger a massive boom in middle-class energy-exploration jobs — which don’t necessarily require college degrees.

Joel Kotkin, the wonderful Los Angeles writer and futurist, took a road trip to Fargo, North Dakota, to see how fracking and other economic initiatives had transformed the remote state:

“North Dakota leads the nation in virtually every indicator of prosperity: the lowest unemployment rate, and the highest rates of net in-migration, income growth and job creation. Last year North Dakota wages rose a remarkable 8.9%, twice as much as Utah and Texas, which shared honors for second place, and many times the 1% rise experienced nationwide.”

Fargo isn’t in the drilling area, as Kotkin notes, and owes its transformation to many factors. But the old JFK line about a rising tide (economy) lifting all ships certainly holds for North Dakota in general. California could benefit immensely from the same economic multiplier — at least if it can overcome the green religionists and their trial-lawyer buddies.

By Katy Grimes

California could become the next oil boom state. Will Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and a Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature seize the day — and the tax revenue that would come with drilling and fracking? Or will excessive environmental concerns block the development, the jobs and the revenues?

I’ve been saying for months now, if Gov. Brown doesn’t want to go down as the leader responsible for driving the silver stake into the heart of the state of California, he has one option: he can always turn to oil fracking and save the state. Just the mere mention of this dramatic policy change would impact financial markets.

California oil = jobs + tax revenues

California sits on two-thirds of America’s shale oil reserves.  The Monterey Shale Formation is four times the size of the Bakken Shale Reserve in North Dakota, which is now the largest oil producer in the country behind Texas.

Along the Western side of the San Joaquin Valley in the middle of the state, the Monterey Shale Formation encompasses several hundred miles, where water has dried up and unemployment is the highest in the state.

North Dakota has a monthly oil output of nearly 20 million barrels, and accounts for 11 percent of U.S. oil production. But California quickly could produce 15 million barrels a month more using today’s technology. Many experts estimate as much as 400 billion barrels of oil are in the Monterey Shale Formation.

The oil boom in North Dakota spurred the state’s $3.8 billion surplus and is responsible for the declining unemployment rate, currently at 3.2 percent, the lowest in the nation.

California’s unemployment still hovers at 9.8 percent, and is tied for the worst rate in the nation with Nevada. “Over the last 20 years, 3.6 million more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in, and 130,000 more Americans have moved from Hawaii than to it,” reported “Rich States, Poor States,” authored by Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore and Jonathan Williams.

This is what’s known as a teaching moment.

California has implemented no real reform policies in recent years to promote jobs. Currently, Brown has not seemed to be interested in making any of these pro-growth economic moves as he pushes high-speed rail and the implementation of AB 32’s radical climate change policies.

“However, if Brown merely adopted the tax reform policies of Kansas, California would see immediate improvement in the business sector, job growth and unemployment rate,” I wrote recently.

“Kansas flattened the income tax, dropped three tax brackets to two, lowered the income tax rate from 6.45 percent to 4.9 percent, and eliminated personal income tax for small business owners,” explains “Rich States, Poor States.”

In lieu of the pro-growth policies in Kansas, oil revenues would be fruitful.

Oil jobs

California’s financial house is a mess. But the Golden State is sitting on a lot more oil and jobs than the state has seen in decades.

“Gov. Jerry Brown yields to no one in his enthusiasm for green energy, but he knows black gold when he sees it,” Investors Business Daily recently wrote. “Witness his remarks last Wednesday at an event announcing three new renewable energy projects: ‘We want to get the greenhouse gas emissions down, but we also want to keep the economy going. That’s the balance that’s required.’”

A recent study found that exploiting Monterey shale could generate up to 2.8 million new jobs and add 14 percent to the state’s GDP by 2020, near the peak of production.

The University of Southern California researchers and the Communications Institute, a Los Angeles-based think tank, found those new jobs would include many outside the actual shale formation. But most of the new employment would be near the drilling — in the counties that have some of the highest unemployment in the state.

High-speed rail false jobs

Brown knows where jobs are needed the most, and high-speed rail won’t provide these. Oil can and will do far more for the Central Valley and state than Brown’s train, where the only jobs are going to well-connected union contractors and public relations firms.

If the California Environmental Quality Act can be exempted to build sports stadiums, California’s politicians should use their power for good, and tell the environmentalists to sit back and enjoy the economic oil boom.

By John Seiler

Steven Greenhut, whose column we run, has written an amusing article in Bloomberg about how Californians want oil tax money, but not the oil:

“The only thing California’s environmentally friendly Democratic legislators prefer to regulating private industry is spending public dollars. So it’s fascinating to watch them struggle with an unfolding dilemma.

“The state can tap into a gusher of new revenue only if legislators resist the muscular green lobby and allow oil companies to take advantage of vast petroleum reserves in the Monterey Shale geologic formation that runs south and east from San Francisco.

“The federal government, which auctioned drilling leases in a portion of the Monterey Shale late last year, estimates that the formation holds more than 15 billion barrels of oil….”

“As the legislative session progresses, California’s leaders will choose between two types of green — environmentalism or the lure of new cash. Which way they turn will say much about the future of the state’s long-term economic competitiveness.”

Read the rest here.

By Chris Reed

It’s bad enough that the media consistently depict hydraulic fracturing as new when it’s been around for 60-plus years. But what’s also amazing is that the California media covering the state government’s ongoing attempts to develop “fracking” regulations — including occasional contrarian Dan Walters — never mention the fact that the Obama administration has basically said full speed ahead. The U.S. Energy Department accepts the consensus of regulators over the past 40 years that fracking to access oil and natural gas reserves is just another heavy industry — one that’s fairly dirty but manageable.

I made this point in a U-T San Diego editorial which noted fracking’s immense potential to create an economic boom in the Golden State:

“What few seem to understand, and what the media have rarely emphasized, is that the Obama administration dismisses [environmentalists’] alarmism about fracking … .

“This is why the president’s first energy secretary, Steven Chu, said: ‘We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.’

“This is why the MIT physicist the White House recently nominated to succeed Chu, Ernest Moniz, described the risks to water posed by fracking as ‘challenging but manageable.’

“This is why the president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, told a House committee that she was ‘not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.’”

Have you seen this context in any MSM story about California’s regulation of fracking?

Nah.

The same pathetic bunch that ignored the downside of AB 32 until this year has ignored the fact that fracking has Obama’s blessing.

Pretty amazing.

By Chris Reed

As Californians begin to appreciate the immense economic potential of the state’s underground natural gas and oil reserves, the debate will sharply intensify over the safety of hydraulic fracturing — the newly refined and improved tool used to access previously unreachable reserves. Fracking, the shorthand term for the process, involves using high-powered streams of water, with a small amount of chemicals and solids or sand, to break up rock formations thousands of feet underground.

Of the states most associated with fracking — North Dakota, Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania — what has happened in the latter is of most interest to Californians. In the Keystone State, the use of fracking to tap vast natural gas reserves in an underground formation called the Marcellus Shale flourished under a liberal Democratic governor, Ed Rendell. The former Philadelphia mayor simply never gave credence to the various scare tactics used to try to block fracking and brushed off the criticism from the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial page, environmental groups and others with an ideological, quasi-religious abhorrence of fossil fuels.

If Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is to be persuaded to follow Rendell’s path, advocates of fracking need to learn from Pennsylvania and how the debate unfolded there.

Stick to the facts to counter hysterics

Advocates should argue that fracking is not perfect, but that no oil exploration is, and note that when properly regulated, it has a strong safety record. Scott Perry, who was the director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Oil and Gas Management under Rendell, liked to respond to the harshest critique with this just-the-facts statement: “There has never been any evidence of fracking ever causing direct contamination of fresh groundwater in Pennsylvania or anywhere else.”

The argument that fracking, which is typically at a depth of 5,000 feet or more, might affect water tables thousands of feet higher isn’t one that most scientists take seriously. John M. Deutch, an MIT chemistry professor who served in high posts in the Carter and Clinton administrations and has been a key adviser to the U.S. Energy Department on fracking, says careful regulation addresses environmental fears in comprehensive fashion. He adds that fracking “is by far the biggest event that I’ve seen” in 50 years of monitoring world energy developments.

What’s striking about media coverage of fracking safety questions is how it largely ignores the fact that the Obama administration rejects the alarmism of the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. In House testimony in May 2011, EPA Director Lisa Jackson said she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.” The U.S. Geological Survey dismissed the idea that fracking causes earthquakes. Most definitively, a November 2011 Energy Department study concluded that there were legitimate pollution concerns surrounding hydraulic fracturing. But the concerns involved the worries about surface air and water quality and about community effects that would come with any heavy industrial project, and were not due to the deleterious effects of fracking underground.

Efficiency gains: It’s not the chemicals, it’s the computers

In explaining why fracking is so much more effective than it used to be, advocates should stress that it is a result of computing power — not more toxic and dangerous chemicals. Drillers are now able to use extraordinarily sophisticated sensors to take the equivalent of a gigantic MRI of underground rock formations, then focus their water cannons on weak spots in the formations surrounding the shale formations with natural gas and oil reserves.

Now, as in the past, by volume the chemicals and sand used are less than 1 percent of the total water used. Because of fracking’s increased efficiency, this means much less water is used than in past versions — and thus fewer chemicals.

Another claim regularly invoked by fracking critics is that the process wastes an extraordinary amount of water. But the Marcellus Shale Coalition says 90 percent of the water used is recycled, and that far more water is used in Pennsylvania on golf courses than in fracking. The recycling percentage is only going to improve as focus grows on the importance of reuse.

The ‘Goebbels’-like anti-fracking documentary

Fracking supporters can shore up their case by pointing to the intentional deception in a 2010 anti-fracking documentary, “GasLand.” The movie’s most unforgettable image is residents of a town in a heavy drilling area — Dimock, Pa. — lighting their tap water on fire, leaving the plain impression this was the result of fracking. Instead, even director Josh Fox acknowledged in an interview with McClatchy-Tribune that it resulted from local conditions unrelated to the chemicals used in fracking. Fox, however, insisted it wasn’t misleading.

Defenders of Pennsylvania’s fracking record like to bring up “GasLand” because they know it is so easily discredited. In a 2011 interview with a newspaper in Lancaster, Pa., Teddy Borawski, chief oil and gas geologist for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, relished the chance to tee off on the documentary. “Joseph Goebbels would have been proud,” he said. “He would have given him the Nazi Award. That, in my opinion, was a beautiful piece of propaganda.”

And in the war of talking points, the fact is that fracking has actually led to the single best news on the U.S. environmental front in many years. Natural gas is much cleaner than coal and oil, and fracking has increased supplies so dramatically that it now costs only a third or less of what it did in 2008 in the United States. The result: “The amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years,” as AP reported last summer.

The irony could hardly be greater. For decades, environmentalists have argued that renewable energy such as solar and wind power are the only way to reduce the release of dangerous emissions into the atmosphere. But it is plentiful new supplies of a fossil fuel, natural gas, that has been the game changer. The U.S. has reduced carbon dioxide emissions more than any other nation since 2006, according to the International Energy Association.

California could thrive if it joins the “brown energy” revolution. The  Monterey Shale formation under the Central Valley is far bigger than the Marcellus Shale formation under Pennsylvania and other northeastern states. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 15, “The overall economic benefits of opening up the Monterey Shale field could reach $1 trillion.”

Allowing fracking to work its magic will be especially difficult in a state that is home to AB 32 and that is ground zero for regulatory excesses in the name of preventing pollution. But while governor of Pennsylvania from 2003-2011, Ed Rendell overcame reflexive green objections with his just-the-facts approach. It can work in California, too.