Post Carbon Fellow David Hughes’ presentation on the propects for the Monterey shale play, as detailed in his Post Carbon report Drilling California, was reported in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

From the article:

Dr. David Hughes, a geoscientist with the Post Carbon Institute, and researcher Robert Collier had been invited to speak by Next Generation, a policy group focused on climate change that was co-founded by Steyer.

Last year, researchers from the University of Southern California released a study that wound up being cited time and again as the basis for the oil industry’s arguments in the context of a statewide debate on fracking ignited by environmentalists.

Partially funded by the Western States Petroleum Association, oil industry lobbyists, the USC report outlined a rosy economic outlook stemming from oil extraction in the Monterey Shale, a vast geologic formation touted as “a new, economy-spurring natural resource.”…

But Hughes, the geoscientist, characterized this estimate as unrealistic. “The Monterey Shale certainly will produce more oil and gas, but likely only a very small fraction of what’s been reported in the INTEK report,” he said. “Projections are highly unlikely to be realized.”

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