Posted on 04/10/2008 11:30:14 AM PDT by reluctantwarrior
I'm not sure of the range, but I believe horiz drilling is more efficient....you don't really see those horizontal only oil rigs side by side like the old days.
It’s much much better than you have been lead to believe. It has only begun to be drilled. The current producing well volumes double this recent propaganda from the USGS. The remaining 95% of the field has yet to be drilled.
This is the report? Then the thread title should be changed.
I am not a geologist or have any monetary interest in any of the players so its a laymans take on it.
Some of the best deposits are under a large lake in ND, some of the shale is accessible best from the side because of the overlaying rock .
The Bakken yields mostly oil. Higher concentrations of liquid methane are only a very small percentage of the overall production in the field.
Assuming 45M/day imports that’s about 81 years worth. We might be able to buy Wall Street back from the Arabs and Chinese.
Then please suggest a better one to the mods.....
Thread title change request: this IS the USGS report on the Bakken.
WINNER WINNER, CHICKEN DINNER... The only thing you can be sure of is that the numbers are nuts. If the Government had anything to do with it they don’t know anything for sure. All of the geological reports I have seen and the reports from Mobile say we have in excess of 200,000,000 Billion with a B. The Oil companies still do not know the exact extent of this formation. What ever it is a real blessing for all of the U. S. Now if we don’t fool around and sell it all to China..
the last USGS report cited 151 million barrels and this one cites 3,647 million barrels so I think it is about as good as a bureacrat will go out on a limb
The bad news is that the Liberals will never, ever, let is drill for any of it.
The oil-bearing shale is in a horizontal strata. If you drill straight down you only hit a little bit of it.
If you drill down and then turn 90 deg and drill horizontally with preforated pipe, you get substantially more flow. You can increase the flow and oil available by "fracking" the shale, pumping a liquid mixture down under pressure, to open up the pores.
This oil is not in pools like older fields in the southern US. The oil is in the shale and needs coaxing to get it out. Not feasible at 40$/bbl - but it is at 100$/bbl.
We’re doing a pretty good job of it right now. The Liberals will have problems stopping private lease ventures.
It is no problem to drill (horizontally) under the lake, we’ve done it already.
from the USGS press release
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.
Right I know that wells are being drilled beside the lake to extract what is under the lake RED BADGER was asking why the need for horizontal drilling
However, when you are talking about undiscovered reserves in a basin which has been drilled for 50 years, that could mean anything without a hole through it for a mile in any direction. That would reduce the amount of 'undiscovered' reserves (note not unproven, but undiscovered) substantially.
I would have to know exactly what they meant by 'undiscovered' before I would debate their findings.
The oil is NOT found in shale’s. It is found mostly in Sandstone and Limestone between two shale layers.
Shale does not permeate oil well. The non-permeable nature of the shale’s is what make producing this formation feasible. Fracking is done later if necessary, but it is not a liquid mixture to “open up the pores”, it simply fractures the formation to allow the oil to flow freely into the production liner.
Also, drilling is NOT done with perforated pipe. It done with down hole mud turbines. (Motors) Production liners are only run where sands might impede production, and they are not perforated.
The Poplar field is only a tiny portion of the Bakken and is located on the outer most boundary of the known field. It begins to dry up quickly further West. It is also the Western most boundary of the field the heaviest production is found 150 miles East of there.
151 million? It said 200 to 400 billion barrels of oil in place.
Diagenesis and Fracture Development in the Bakken Formation, Williston Basin: Implications for Reservoir Quality in the Middle Member
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1653/p1653.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1653
First printing November 2001
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