From bust to bounty (Tens of billions of barrels of oil in ND and Mont)

Twincities.com ^ | 12/09/2007 | LESLIE BROOKS SUZUKAMO

[R W Reactionairy]

Thanks. Most informative and by your description much more promising than I had believed. I wish someone with your sort of knowledge had written the article.

[Smokin' Joe]

Thanks!

There are not many writers out there with close to 30 years doing wellsite geology or who have examined nearly 100 miles of this formation, one 30 ft. sample at a time.

Most journalists butcher technical articles, anyway.

It only makes me wonder how bad the ones are which cover areas out of my expertise.

[Robert A Cook PE]

A lot of that oil (in the older CA fields) is still there: The easy barrels (first 25%-30%) have been pulled out, but the rest of the rock “refills” from untapped zones back to the pumped regions and you can begin begin pumping/fracturing/pressurizing & sucking it out again after several years.

If they let you drill at all, that is.

[stboz]

The most optimistic estimates for the Bakken are over 400 BILLION barrels.

[saganite]

It only makes me wonder how bad the ones are which cover areas out of my expertise.

Anytime I have been close to a story I have been amazed at the inaccuracies in the press. I’m generally happy if they get the generalities right.

[Enchante]

Germany’s synfuel project was based upon coal so far as I recall...... South Africa has also done a lot in this area. It’s more expensive than getting it from the ground (if you have the oilfields to drill), but with the current price of oil maybe synfuel diesel from coal will become a big thing. Is anyone in the USA trying to do this yet?

[saganite]

Actually, the most optimistic estimates by a geoligist named Price put it at 500 billion barrels with 50% of that being recoverable. Others are more conservative in their estimates. A USGS survey is due next year which could help clarify it.

[stboz]

I work for an agchem company and we have locations in North Dakota and eastern Montana. We can’t begin to hire truck drivers to deliver our products.....everyboy’s gone to the oil patch.

[thackney]

If it's proven safe and clean that a six sq. mile area can be drained from one production pad, what would that mean to their fight to keep ANWR off limits?

A lot bigger area than that is already in production on the Alaskan North Slope. This isn't a theory. It is existing production sites in the Alpine Area on the Western North Slope.

http://www.conocophillipsalaska.com/ArcticEnergy.pdf

BP is going to be able to reach 8 miles horizontally with the new drill rig they are having built for the North Slope.

30 STRONG: UERD for offshore development
http://www.petroleumnews.com/pnads/48009602.shtml

...But Liberty drilling will likely achieve world records for extended reach drilling, with horizontal departures from the wellheads of up to 44,000 feet or more.

“Drilling studies support departures of 34,000 to 44,000 feet,” BP has said...

[saganite]

I think I remember reading some time ago that the oil companies were planning to drill in the Beaufort Sea and tap the oil in ANWAR this way until they were shut down with new requirements to prove they will never spill a drop of oil. Does that ring a bell?

[thackney]

Shell has been doing some drilling in the Beaufort Sea including offshore of ANWR this past year. There have been protests and delays from complaints concerning the whales.

[CPT Clay]

You the man Joe!!!!

[RightWhale]

Conoco announced $1 billion of exploration in Alaska for next year, and a whole lot more elsewhwere.

[ZULU]

A true miracle - high oil prices and new technologies converge!!!!

[Smokin' Joe]

Their fight is not based on facts, nor is it based on anything approaching common sense.

Unfortunately, unlike here, ANWR has no crowd of indigenous residents who can come to the meeting and tell those people to go home, back to wherever they live, and leave us alone.

More unfortunately, this allows the "activists" to claim to "speak for the environment", not to mention all the wee beasties and plants.

When the "Buffalo Commons" bunch came through here, they were politiely treated, but their ideas recieved the well-deserved derision they should have. And they went back to New Jersey with their grand plan for the Northern Prairie of herding people into town and letting the rest go to seed.

They even tried to make a dozen or so small parcels of land into Designated Wilderness Area, an idea which failed when a few of us marked the areas on the map and saw that it made a continuous strip through part of Southwestern North Dakota, one which would have shut down oil drilling and ranching in a much larger area.

Of course, the legal descriptions of those parcels as presented did not strike a note, at least until one realized that parcel 9 abuts parcel 1, and so on, which inspired the map.

It isn't just ANWR, and it isn't just oil.

[Smokin' Joe]

If anyone here does not have a job, they don't want one. Everyone is short handed, especially retail and fast food.

Housing is short, too, but there are a lot of places up for sale (and yes, the local market is inflated compared to a few years ago--but not out of line with national averages.)

[Smokin' Joe]

...they were shut down with new requirements to prove they will never spill a drop of oil.

Now go look at your average paved parking space and tell me that is reasonable.

[Smokin' Joe]

Nice diagram, but 502 acres is 0.8 square miles, not .08 (640 acres to the secion)

[saganite]

Well, I was exaggerating a bit but my driveway is a class one oil spill if that criteria is used. ;^)