Posted on 11/16/2016 4:41:20 PM PST by Kaslin
Tuesday the U.S. Geological Survey announced the largest ever assessment of “continuous oil” ever made in the United States. The Wolfcamp shale in the area of Midland, Texas is estimated to contain three times the oil and gas of the Bakken shale formation in Montana and North Dakota. From the USGS:
The Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin portion of Texas’ Permian Basin province contains an estimated mean of 20 billion barrels of oil, 16 trillion cubic feet of associated natural gas, and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey. This estimate is for continuous (unconventional) oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources.
The estimate of continuous oil in the Midland Basin Wolfcamp shale assessment is nearly three times larger than that of the 2013 USGS Bakken-Three Forks resource assessment, making this the largest estimated continuous oil accumulation that USGS has assessed in the United States to date.
“The fact that this is the largest assessment of continuous oil we have ever done just goes to show that, even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more,” said Walter Guidroz, program coordinator for the USGS Energy Resources Program.
Continuous oil refers to resources that are spread out rather than concentrated into a single area. So why is this massive amount of oil and gas just being assessed as recoverable now? Because technology has changed:
Oil has been produced using traditional vertical well technology. However, more recently, oil and gas companies have been using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and more than 3,000 horizontal wells have been drilled and completed in the Midland Basin Wolfcamp section.
The Fort Worth Star Telegram reports this backs up industry claims that the area could be the 2nd largest oil and gas field in the world:
The estimate lends credence to the assertion from Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield that the Permian’s shale could hold as much as 75 billion barrels, making it second only to Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field. Irving-based Pioneer has been increasing its production targets all year as drilling in the Wolfcamp produced bigger gushers than the company’s engineers and geologists forecast.
It’s estimated that the US known reserves at our present rate of consumption will last the US 300 years.
bingo
The earth does produce oil, I can prove it
I’ve believed it created oil and not via dinosaurs for longer then i can remember. But produce I mean some process we don’t know about deep in the earth.
They’ve found planets covered in hydrocarbons
Two points, how are diamonds made and what is noble metal ?
Trump’s fault.
I’ve actually never heard of noble metal, I understand how diamonds are made. For over 40 years I didn’t think dinosaurs and oil are related.
Granny Clampett could find oil just by shootin’ at the ground!
Beat me by 2 minutes! Texas Tea!
Google stainless steel as a nobel metal as
Oopposed to aluminum, noble metal has acshape memory
Thanks, will do.
And this is just the Midland Basin portion of the play. The Delaware Basin to the west has nearly as much.
They are tapping the source rock for the basin that has sourced all the conventional fields through the years.
You want to crunch those again?
Off topic to prove a point, to this day idiots believe the earth is flat, how does science disprove that, water displacement
These discoveries are being driven by changes in technology.
Nope, shale is a filter but not a holdin bowl
One day, renewables will be cheap enough to compete with fossil fuel. Right now they aren't. We're being forced to pay to develop renewables primarily because the rest of the world is running low on fossil fuel. Our leaders agree with their donors that it's not fair for us to have such an advantage.
Horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracing is what is driving these plays. The rock has always been there but the permeability is too low.
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