The Bureau of Land Management announced on Friday it has approved oil and gas leasing in its Central Coast Field Office jurisdiction. The development will take place in Fresno, Monterey, and San Benito counties. Monterey county is already home to the 4th largest operating oil field in the state, at San Ardo which has 600 producing wells. The BLM estimates that the oil industry supports about 3 thousand jobs and over 600 million dollars in tax revenue within its Central Coast jurisdiction.
