Posted on 04/11/2008 7:15:35 AM PDT by Red Badger
Map showing Williston Basin Province boundary (in red), Bakken-Lodgepole Total Petroleum System (TPS) (in blue), and major structural features in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota
North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation of the Williston Basin, according to a just-released assessment by the US Geological Survey (USGS). This latest assessment shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency’s 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.
The assessment also identified 1.85 trillion cubic feet of associated/dissolved natural gas, and 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids.
New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger technically recoverable oil volumes. About 105 million barrels of oil were produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007.
Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000.
The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest continuous oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A continuous oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest continuous oil accumulation in the US is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1.0 billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil.
The USGS estimate of 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil has a mean value of 3.65 billion barrels. Scientists conducted detailed studies in stratigraphy and structural geology and the modeling of petroleum geochemistry. They also combined their findings with historical exploration and production analyses to determine the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil estimates.
USGS worked with the North Dakota Geological Survey, a number of petroleum industry companies and independents, universities and other experts to develop a geological understanding of the Bakken Formation. These groups provided critical information and feedback on geological and engineering concepts important to building the geologic and production models used in the assessment.
Five continuous assessment units (AU) were identified and assessed in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana: the Elm Coulee-Billings Nose AU, the Central Basin-Poplar Dome AU, the Nesson-Little Knife Structural AU, the Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and the Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU.
At the time of the assessment, a limited number of wells have produced oil from three of the assessments units in Central Basin-Poplar Dome, Eastern Expulsion Threshold, and Northwest Expulsion Threshold. The Elm Coulee oil field in Montana, discovered in 2000, has produced about 65 million barrels of the 105 million barrels of oil recovered from the Bakken Formation.
Resources
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Pollastro, R.M., Cook, T.A., Roberts, L.N.R., Schenk, C.J., Lewan, M.D., Anna, L.O., Gaswirth, S.B., Lillis, P.G., Klett, T.R., and Charpentier, R.R., 2008, Assessment of undiscovered oil resources in the Devonian-Mississippian Bakken Formation, Williston Basin Province, Montana and North Dakota, 2008: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2008–3021 *
Technology-Based Oil and Natural Gas Plays: Shale Shock! Could There Be Billions in the Bakken? (US EIA)
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Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.....
If you want ON or OFF the DIESEL ”KnOcK” LIST just FReepmail me.....
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days.....
MORE DIESEL!!!!.........
And no doubt the environmentalists are scouring the countryside looking for some rare plant or animal to list as endangered and will demand protection from drilling for the entire region. Let them all freeze in a North Dakota winter.
Good luck getting past the damn socialists who will declare the whole area an endagered habitat for the purple speckled warble whacker.....
Yeah. Isn’t that where the snarful gyroptis lives?
They would have to survey for the purple speckled warble whacker, and they only come out late at night in January in very remote areas of the badlands. Drop off tours will be offered...right after jackalope season closes.
No matter how much they find, the Rats and their buddy enviromentalist will not let them drill. I am fed up with their BS of trying to make us a third world country.
Sorry, the warble whackers ate them all...
Awesome! Now we can burn this stuff and hopefully warm the planet.
We’ve been drilling horizontal wells in the Middle Bakken since 2000. They are too late.
I have heard estimates of up to 500 billion barrels of oil so if only about 4 billion is technically recoverable even with the new drilling technologies of today then I'd say this is sort of sad news.
.... drill, ye tarriers, drill...
I did not know that. How come no one heard of it until lately?
This is a government report.........
Horrors! The Striped Badland Prairie Mouse will no doubt take the brunt of this development and be endangered.
And no doubt the environmentalists are scouring the countryside looking TO PLANT some rare plant or animal to list as endangered and will demand protection from drilling for the entire region...........
Sounds like a great big guess to me...
True. I wonder what kind of seismic survey they did? I'm in seismic research and development. I work with a geophysicist who worked on the ANWR survey for the USGS back in the 1980s and he says that the ANWR probably has 4-5 times the reported 10-16 billion barrels due to the fact that the seismic technology back then wasn't very good.
This estimate is on the very low end of what was expected.
Industry was expecting an assesment of something like 100 to 300 billion barrels of total oil resources with a technically recoverable rate of 2% to 5% (with recoverable resources then ranging from 2 billion to 15 billion.)
The USGS chose to just release the technically recoverable number of 3.6 billion barrels.
And a government “guess” at that...............
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