''California state legislators on Tuesday told regulators and oil industry lobbyists they wanted more information about the use of acid to increase flows in wells in a technique that is used more often in the state than the controversial fracking method.
California's century-old oil sector has come in for greater scrutiny as companies make early attempts to tap the Monterey shale, a deep formation that holds an estimated 15 billion barrels of oil - twice that of North Dakota's widely publicized Bakken shale.
Fracking - a technique that uses pressurized water to crack open rock formations and allow oil to flow to wells - may have become a better-known term because of its use around the country to extract shale gas and oil but the use of acid appears to be more extensive in California.
Oil companies in the state use hydrofluoric or hydrochloric acid to clean out well bores and to fracture solid rock. The technique is relatively old but its use has increased in the past decade.
"We have to get this right," state Senator Fran Pavley, who chairs the senate committee on natural resources and water, said at the hearing in Sacramento. "Regulators must also keep pace with changing technologies."
Environmentalists have focused on the danger that acid jobs present to workers and want more research on potential ecological damage.
Many millions of people could be affected by oil development in the Monterey shale, which runs across a vast expanse of the state from Los Angeles to south of San Francisco''.
