Posted on 05/15/2008 6:25:17 PM PDT by mondoreb
HUGE Oil Field in Montana is Good News for Consumers --Which Makes it Unpalatable for the Mainstream Media
While Jeroen van der Veer, Shell’s chief executive, fears for the future of oil supplies after 2015--maybe he's confusing Shell's oil supply with the rest of the world's--Newsmax has just released information on the HUGE oil discovery in Montana: the Williston Basin or "Bakken" field.
About 470 miles outside the state capitol of Helena - in a place called Richland County, Montana - more millionaires are being created per capita than anywhere else in America.As one can see from the map below, before the 'Bakken' discovery, the U.S. was still a major oil producer--it is just a major consumer, also.It's the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, Montana is looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.
* "When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea." says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.
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For years, U.S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the "Big Oil" companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels.
And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!
That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight.
(Excerpt) Read more at deathby1000papercuts.com ...
“the new method of horizontal drilling “
Horizontal drilling is not new technology. Employed with MeasurementWhileDrilling (MWD) instruments in the drill bit makes for a “steerable” drill head. This has been around for 15-20 years. What is new is the 3D/4D computer modeling of the formations’ reservoirs, just exactly where the oil is located to within a few feet.
This enhanced explortion method is what led to the revised estimates of the recoverable reserves.
BUT my next info is even more news as regards the oilshale there and in Canada and the GreenRiver formations of WY&CO&UT.
In-situ technology using dialable frequency microwave equipment now allows for the hydrocarbons to be fracted in the borehole and the liquids to be extracted easily at a fraction of the previous methods expense - both dollar cost and energy without using any water to do this.
This technology is ready to go NOW in full scale projects and are to begin in a few weeks in Canadian oilshale.
RD Shell is aware of this info and is a major player in the GreenRiver formation projects.
This is full bore mature engineering going back 5-10 years.
The oilshale/plain oil in NA (including GoM) is 20 times more than all of Saudi and Iran and Iraq and Brazil combined and that is what’s got the OPEC buggers worried.
Exactly, now the 43 billion barrels is a stretch, that number may come from the Colorado Coal Oil fields buried under the Rockies, there is a monstrous sized oil field in the CO WY area, but it is “dirty” oil shale.
There are two different government agencies making two very different estimates of how much of the oil is recoverable with today’s technology. The Energy Information Administration estimates there are between 200 and 503 billion barrels of currently recoverable oil there.
The U.S. Geological Survey now estimates 4 billion barrels. But they are estimating that less than 1% of the oil is recoverable.
So, how big a deal this really is depends on who is right.
But yes, algae, plants and animals still grow and die in the ocean, continue to get covered up by sediment and buried deeper and deeper over the years. Some of that stuff resting on the ocean bottom today will be oil, in about 200 million years or so.
“The Energy Information Administration estimates there are between 200 and 503 billion barrels of currently recoverable oil there.
The U.S. Geological Survey now estimates 4 billion barrels. But they are estimating that less than 1% of the oil is recoverable.”
The disparity there is fairly spectacular, 4 billion compared to 200 - 503 billion recoverable. There seems to be some impressive incompetence in one or both agencies, or their goal isn’t really to provide accurate information.
I see a conspiracy.
Well, now They know. Your fate is sealed. : (
The key is the phrase “currently recoverable”. Most of the oilmen I’ve talked to here in Texas agree that what is recoverable today is far less than what will be recoverable in 5 years. They also tell me these agencies are frequently at odds about how much oil is “currently” recoverable because they use different assumptions.
The USGS estimated that the total recoverable gas from the Barnett Shale field was less than has already been produced and it’s still going strong.
Most of the guys I’ve talked to believe there is at least 150 billion barrels recoverable in Bakken now and that before they pump all of that the technology will be in place to recover even more. But Texas oilmen are an optimistic bunch, so who knows.
And we are dealing with estimates from government agencies so there is a pant load of politics involved in each report. That makes it harder to know who is right.
Some is likely being generated by other processes deep underground. I have a lot of trouble believing that the billions of barrels we are pumping and using were made by dead dinosaurs, trees, algae, etc.
hahaha...!
I caught the typo in the report itself, but put it up on FR from the original...OOPS!
Good eye!
“And we are dealing with estimates from government agencies so there is a pant load of politics involved in each report. That makes it harder to know who is right.”
Yep, politics and not so knowledgeable reporters involved. But it does seem that as great as is our need for a real energy policy and greater domestic production, that all those involved need to get together and make realistic assessments of where we stand. Then again, who knows how eager the oil men are to increase production when they have record prices and record profits?
And, and only half kidding, they better get the production in the Bakken field ramped up before the Democrats put most of it off limits.
BUMP
We will still need energy to recharge those batteries. And we do not have one millionth of the capacity in our electric grid system to support battery charging on the scale that would be required to provide vehicular transportation needs. We are at a minimum, decades away from that.
Origins: This item about untapped oil reserves in the Bakken formation (which lies within portions of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana) appears to have been taken from atout sheet intended to sell subscriptions to an investment newsletter. It is vaguely true in the sense that geologists have estimated there is a good deal of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in that area, and as the price of crude oil increases and the technology for extracting resources from formations like Bakken improves, that area becomes more and more economically viable as a source of oil for the U.S. However, the estimate of over500 billion barrels of oil to be recovered from the Bakken formation is an overly optimistic one based on incomplete, outdated information.
IOW, overexagerated marketing hype. Not to be believed.
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