Posted on 02/19/2011 7:02:39 AM PST by Son House
Industry experts may disagree on the EXACT number of recoverable barrels of oil that lie beneath the Bakken. But they do agree, it has to be in the BILLIONS. There are about 170 rigs drilling in North Dakota and oil tycoon Harold Hamm says that number is expected to rise.
Although, that's not the only increase that will take place. They decorate the horizon in much of western North Dakota....a touch of scenery ...but more importantly the icon of energy development in our state
(Harold Hamm/Continental Resources, CEO) "In total development in the Bakken we see about 48000 wells, of which 90-percent are yet to be drilled so, so we just scratched the surface guys." Oil tycoon Harold Hamm says the formations in North Dakota and Montana hold about 20 billion barrels of recoverable crude
The production rate now is already two times what is was in 2005
(Harold Hamm/Continental Resources, CEO) "My estimate is that may be as high as 1,000,000 barrels a day and it may be just a tad more than that." Large numbers, which are sure to keep oil companies plenty busy...just like they have been for the past several years
Harold Hamm Continental Resources, CEO "Looking back in 2005 there were 5,000 jobs in the North Dakota drilling oil industry employment according to the numbers that were published. In 2009, it was up to 18,000. We are estimating right now that that number is up to 30,000. We are estimating that if it goes to a million barrels a day that number will get to be about 100,000 jobs." Positions Hamm encourages oil companies fill with North Dakotans.
Harold Hamm Continental Resources, CEO "We're educating them. You certainly want to keep them here. We need them in this industry. This is a high technical industry today and it takes those people." Since the boom, Hamm says the employment in oil country has increased by 45-percent and he expects it to rise in the next five years
Hamm says it's important to create an industry that is sustainable. He says it starts with permanent housing and permanent employees.
That's a start. Plus, that's roughly $100M/day that we aren't sending to people who want to kill us. The only reason we wouldn't drill there is stupidity, pure stupidity.
I heard some doorknob on the Joel Heidcamp show advocating a 25% extraction tax on ND oil. Hard to comprehend how short-circuited his logic was - if you can even call it reason and logic.
I work at a ND coal powerplant. As of Jan 1 we are operating under new NOx and SO2 emissions rules that required us to spend 400 million in upgrades and spend enough additional operating costs in urea and lime that the connected consumer’s rates just this year will go up 22%. In the last ten years those rates have doubled. The connected consumers become frustrated with their local coop, that coop’s representative on my employer’s board of directors becomes frustrated with the plant management so we are under the microscope. The farce of it is the rate increases trace to the root cause of government mandates - the Minnesota green energy mandate, and the 1990 federal Clean Air Act. So if the connected consumer wants to correctly direct his frustrations he should look to the government he elected to serve him.
That’s what doorknobs like the one who advocates a 25% oil extaction tax don’t understand. Government taxes and mandates suck money away from the capitalistic economic engine, spray it outside that engine, then we wonder why the engine isn’t producing any economic power! Spraying money outside the capitalistic economic engine produces no economic power - we saw that with the “stimulus” didn’t we - but instead produces huge debt bubbles on both the state and federal level. Too many people are either ignorant or apathetic about how the wonderful capitalistic economic engine produces true economic power.
“The only reason we wouldn’t drill there is stupidity, pure stupidity.”
Not exactly.
That may be true for “we” including you & me & Freepers, but the people who will try to stop this are not doing it because of stupidity (well, maybe some of the stupid, emotional, “save the planet” eco-freaks), but because they want America to continue sending an extra $100M/day to people who want to destroy us.
Because those who will try to stop domestic drilling want to destroy America.
If they were really concerned about “fossil fuels, Global Warming & Save the Planet, they would themselves IMMEDIATELY stop their personal use of fossil fuels & electricity (except solar panels that were not disrupting the mating habits of the endangered desert tortoise. /sarc)
“Spraying money outside the capitalistic economic engine produces no economic power - we saw that with the “stimulus” didn’t we - but instead produces huge debt bubbles on both the state and federal level. Too many people are either ignorant or apathetic about how the wonderful capitalistic economic engine produces true economic power.”
Exactly. I would say willfully ignorant, but ignorant none the less of any concept of the free market -vs- the inefficiency of the socialist models.
Boiled down, the free market IS individual liberty. One is connected to the other, and we have to present it in those terms.
The Bakken geologic area and similar ones in OK, TX & PA have been unlocked to produce prodigious amounts of gas and oil by the drilling technique called fracking. The US could cut its dependence on foreign oil a lot if we can continue to drill this way.
Our liberal masters, the environmentalists and the foreign, one world guys who pay them are afraid the US could stay strong with domestic energy sources. That’s why fracking is being said to contaminate ground water, a bogus claim as the fracking is thousands of feet below the water table used for surface water wells.
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