Agnes Kurthy
BUS 140 – Research Paper
December 2, 2013

Should the State of California Permit Fracking on a Large Scale
Despite a recent decline attributed to a relatively nominal growth over the past couple of years, California continues to rank among the top 10 of the world’s largest economies. It is currently ranked as the world’s ninth largest economy, surpassing many developed nations with an annual GDP exceeding two trillion Dollars, according to a report by CNN last year.1
California’s crude oil and natural gas deposits are located in six geological basins in the Central Valley and along the coast. California has more than a dozen of the United States' largest oil fields, including the Midway-Sunset Oil Field, the second largest oil field in the contiguous United States. California is sitting on a massive amount of shale oil and could become the next oil boom state. But only if the industry can get the stuff out of the ground without upsetting the state's powerful environmental lobby. Running from Los Angeles to San Francisco, California's Monterey Shale is thought to contain more oil than North Dakota's Bakken and Texas's Eagle Ford, both scenes of an oil boom that's created thousands of jobs and boosted U.S. oil production to the highest rate in over a decade.
In 2010, California produced 12% of the natural gas, 71% of the electricity, and 38.11% of the crude oil it consumes. The remaining electricity and natural gas was purchased from Canada, the Pacific Northwest, the Rocky Mountain States and the Southwest. Remaining crude oil was imported from Alaska and abroad.2
California is therefore a net importer of oil and petroleum based fuels account for up to 96% of the state’s transportation needs. Transportation is the single largest emitter of greenhouse gasses and although the state is working on alternative transportation fuels to reduce green