Posted on 03/28/2008 9:59:13 AM PDT by a real Sheila
America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.
In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated
(Excerpt) Read more at nextenergynews.com ...
for later
why isn’t this part of a US strategy?
Tell the OPEC countries to clean the gutters of terrorists or we will simply stop buying their oil.
BFL
Not an issue. This formation does not require heat for producing the oil. It does require modern drilling techniques that are now being used. Read more at the link:
Technology-Based Oil and Natural Gas Plays:
Shale Shock! Could There Be Billions in the Bakken?
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ftproot/features/ngshock.pdf
Who said this was cheap? It takes significant horizontal drilling and fracturing, and the completions are not simple.
“There is oil there but how much will require a new seismic survey with the latest technology to determine how extensively distributed the oil is.”
I worked for a company in Houston that sold survey maps for oil deposits that were small, hard to get to etc... there is a lot of oil and gas out there. It’s just expensive to get. Plus, a lot of it is under private lands. Now that gas and oil are up there in price- more and more smaller companies will be out drilling and looking.
and the speckled pecker chipmunk
I’ve always thought that ultimately the government does what the HELL it wants, especially when matters of money and national security are involved. The government has so often done as it pleases when it comes to taking away folks land and property to use for “the greater good.” Why the heck can’t this land be explored and drilled regardless of the “greenie weenies?”
let them use up their oil first.
Green River Basin or something like that??
What would be a normal development curve for a field like this, assuming all goes well and median projections are accurate?
This is a different type of production than the Green River Basin in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. I’m not aware of Clinton ownership of any of it. Most of it is on Federally owned land.
Yes, it might be that large. Comparable to the oil shale in Colorado at 400 billion barrels. Get at it cheaply? That’s a different question.
Son has a place in Texas where they have found natural gas in the area and the landowners are negotiating.
Time frame you mean? Some of it is already in production. The area is constricted by pipeline and refinery capacity. Much of the Canadian oil we import is transported along the same corridor. There are many pipeline projects ongoing to expand them.
“Something like creating a preserve in Utah so we had to buy fron his pal Riadi in Indonesia?”
Exactly..
—Well let’s not drill it just yet. They’re willing to sell their oil, so let’s keep using up their supply. When they’re plumb dry, then we can start drilling ours - and decide whether to sell any to our enemies. —
But as long as we import oil from “Ragastan”, we have to defend the Middle East and our supply lines, and this also pi$$es off the friendly natives their in the process, increasing the risk of terrorism (hidden costs of foreign energy supplies). If we were energy independent we could tell the Middle East to bugger off.
Production of the Bakken Formation of the Williston Basin is very different from the Colorado Green River Basin. This is 41° API, no heat required to release it.
We must save it for the future when we won’t even need it.
NO DRILLING IN:insert state or area that the Evil Bush administration wants to drill in.
An American company was looking into developing that undersea field, which, the story said, could dwarf the Saudi oil fields. That story also mentioned that this area was just outside what the Russians claim as THEIR territory, even though that is technically in International waters too. Heh, tuffski.
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