Posted on 03/20/2008 10:40:42 PM PDT by neverdem
Oil drillers have their eye on a vast oil field in and around North Dakota, which promises a steady flow of domestic crude for years.
A new black gold rush is under way, this time in North Dakota. The potential payoff is huge -- up to 100 billion barrels of oil. That’s twice the size of Alaska’s reserves and potentially enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for two decades.
Until now, the obstacles to production seemed overwhelming. The crude oil is locked away in rocks that are buried miles underground in the Bakken Play, a field that stretches into Montana and Saskatchewan, Canada.
But times have changed. High oil prices and new technology make it worth the effort. Computer analysis and remote sensing systems, plus smart drills that can probe horizontally or snake left and right, vastly improve the odds of locating new pools and putting them into production. And though oil is unlikely to remain priced at current stratospheric levels, prices won’t drop to much lower levels, which happened several times since the 1970s, and cause new exploration to dry up. Even if prices fell by half, many barrels of oil could still be produced -- profitably -- from the region.
An official government survey of the Bakken region's oil treasure trove is due out next month. The report is expected to play it very conservatively, because it will confine estimates to the amount of oil that likely can be produced profitably based on last year’s oil prices. It will also not take into account any further technological advances that might make it even easier to extract more oil.
"The Bakken is much like the enormous natural gas field that sat for many years under and around Dallas until people figured out the geology and how to drill it out economically," says Lucian Pugliaresi, president of the Energy Policy Research Foundation.
There's at least a smell of the "Old West" as petroleum companies rush to stake their claims in the Bakken Play. Marathon Oil recently acquired about 200,000 acres in the area and will drill about 300 oil wells within five years. Brigham Exploration and Crescent Point Energy Trust are also interested in some of the action. EOG Resources alone figures it can produce 80 million barrels of oil from its Bakken field.
Figure on at least five years before the oil starts flowing in large volumes. A lot of work will need to be done first. In addition to installing drilling gear, firms must build supporting infrastructure, including roads, pipelines as well as new water, sewage and sanitation systems to meet the needs of workers and other area residents.
Note that the Bakken Play region is not an environmentally sensitive area similar to Alaskan tundra that has stymied much oil field development because of concerns about damage to the fragile environment. Still, some environmental protests are sure to emerge and may gum up development for a while, but they’re unlikely to stop oil production from the Bakken fields.
I guarantee you Obama or Hilary will declare this a National Park.
Gee, I seem to see a story like this two or three times a year. We keep finding more oil, Who’d believe that.
Some how, some way the Greens will NEVER let us use it.
ping
something like at $90/barrel, it would be worth 18 trillion to our economy.. wow..
NEWS BULLETIN April 1, 2009
President Hillary Clinton signs an executive order creating the Bakken Play National Monument. President Clinton in the ceremony attended by the Ambasssadors of Saudi Arabia and China along with the executive boards of Greenpeace and WWF stressed the importance of preserving the natural beauty of this part of North Dakota. This ends any possibility of drilling for what some estimate is 500 billion barrels of oil in the region.
Some how, some way the Greens will NEVER let us use it.
—
not as long as all those who currently sell us oil from abroad are allowed to support econuts&politicos here and get away with it..
Trust me, as soon as the enviro-nuts get wind of this, it will be.
Start slant drilling immediately and steal the part in Canada. Suck it dry. Then start on our part
B.S.
We will not be allowed to touch it.
Oil companies OWN this nation.
If it dislodges one speckled furbish lousewort, the price is too high.
Huge Oil Field, Right Here in US!
21-Mar-2008
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=6769
When we think of oil reserves in the US, we think about coal. But it turns out that America may be sitting on a huge, 200 billion barrel oil field that has gone unnoticed and could make us energy independent.
New drilling technology could make it possible to pump the oil from the Bakken Formation, which covers North Dakota and parts of South Dakota and Montana. According to Next Energy News, “The US imported about 14 million barrels of Oil per day in 2007 , which means US consumers sent about $340 Billion Dollars over seas building palaces in Dubai and propping up unfriendly regimes around the World, if 200 billion barrels of oil at $90 a barrel are recovered in the high plains the added wealth to the US economy would be $18 Trillion Dollars which would go a long way in stabilizing the US trade deficit and could cut the cost of oil in half in the long run.”
Maybe this is why the Middle East is investing in solar energy!
Corsi’s a geologist now?
If W doesn't beat 'em to it...
Why would oil companies NOT want to sell this oil to it’s consumers?
But I heard that we were going to run out of oil in 20 years....30 years ago!
Just to screw with us. That's more important to them than making an honest buck.
[/economically illiterate conspiracist tinfoil blather]
“I guarantee you Obama or Hilary will declare this a National Park.”
Sadly, you can add no-to-ANWR-McCain to your list. It’s really the pits having three dems and no Republicans this year.
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