Posted on 11/16/2016 4:41:20 PM PST by Kaslin
Tuesday the U.S. Geological Survey announced the largest ever assessment of “continuous oil” ever made in the United States. The Wolfcamp shale in the area of Midland, Texas is estimated to contain three times the oil and gas of the Bakken shale formation in Montana and North Dakota. From the USGS:
The Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin portion of Texas’ Permian Basin province contains an estimated mean of 20 billion barrels of oil, 16 trillion cubic feet of associated natural gas, and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey. This estimate is for continuous (unconventional) oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources.
The estimate of continuous oil in the Midland Basin Wolfcamp shale assessment is nearly three times larger than that of the 2013 USGS Bakken-Three Forks resource assessment, making this the largest estimated continuous oil accumulation that USGS has assessed in the United States to date.
“The fact that this is the largest assessment of continuous oil we have ever done just goes to show that, even in areas that have produced billions of barrels of oil, there is still the potential to find billions more,” said Walter Guidroz, program coordinator for the USGS Energy Resources Program.
Continuous oil refers to resources that are spread out rather than concentrated into a single area. So why is this massive amount of oil and gas just being assessed as recoverable now? Because technology has changed:
Oil has been produced using traditional vertical well technology. However, more recently, oil and gas companies have been using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and more than 3,000 horizontal wells have been drilled and completed in the Midland Basin Wolfcamp section.
The Fort Worth Star Telegram reports this backs up industry claims that the area could be the 2nd largest oil and gas field in the world:
The estimate lends credence to the assertion from Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield that the Permian’s shale could hold as much as 75 billion barrels, making it second only to Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field. Irving-based Pioneer has been increasing its production targets all year as drilling in the Wolfcamp produced bigger gushers than the company’s engineers and geologists forecast.
Methane is a very common molecule. You are making some right now in your bowels. Try making some oil.
Yup sorry, I needed to get my reading comprehension glasses on.
Methane is a hydrocarbon, as is crude oil. Please explain how the former came to exist on the surface of Titan.
We also know that hydrocarbons exist in space and other planets, so how did they get there?
Cosmic bolides, i.e. comets and asteroids or rather chunks of comets (which can be asteroids) do contain hydrocarbons as well as all sorts of rare metals as well as the stuff of life. What is it called panspermia? I do believe that life originated here on earth from the heavens above. As for Abiotic oil? It could very well be so.
For an interesting podcast go to Joe Rogan either through iTunes or Joe Rogan’s website and get yesterdays podcast #872? with Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock for an illuminating discussion of North American and how it was the epicenter for the end of the last Ice Age due to Cosmic impacts. It will add to your thinking about the subject. Note: Also available on youtube which might be worthwhile because Randall Carlson displays excellent pictures to illustrate the massive tsumanis that swept the N.A. continent.
I am not an astrophysicist but I am confident as to how the hydrocarbons were generated from this planet. If you are claiming that oil was formed in the mantle (laughable, by the way), please explain why there are no oil fields found below depths of 12,000’, maybe as deep as 18,000’ in cooler basins like South Louisiana? Zip, zilch, notta. The answer is that oil is not stable at those depths. It breaks down into lighter components like methane. So how can it come from the depths of the earth?
I will! I saw them the last time he had them as guests, I am surprised they’re back on so soon!
Its been almost a year to date!....BTW Grimerica has had Randall Carlson on two or three times in the past couple of years. Also lengthy podcasts. The two hosts are amazed at everything and a little stoned methinks. Whatever, they are Canadian...Grimerica on itunes. I don’t have the show numbers handy so you will have to search around August 2014?
that is kinda what I expected.
thanks for the info
Steel and Aluminium are not noble metals. Nobel metals are those that do not readily oxidize and react. They include gold and most of the Platinum group, silver, mercury.
Nope, noble metal is a metal that has memory
Example take to steel rods an adjoin em with a gurney nut, the netal memory or desire to return to shape keeps the gurney nut tightened,as for alunimum, use the same example, there is no memory or ability to return to original shape, gold is a soft metal,
Drill, baby. Drill.
This is the result of high pressures, water, extreme heat, methane and carbon dioxide, cooking deep underground. This oil seeps up everywhere, but certain sedimentary geologic formations trap it. These also contaminate the oil, based on whatever other organic sludge was there. Various bacteria actually thrive on these hydrocarbons, and break them down quickly into water vapor and carbon dioxide, if these molecules aren't trapped underground. (The same bacteria that eats oil spills. Spills just overwhelm them, and it takes a while to break a spill down.)
The Russians can't be wrong about everything. Could it be that the dinosaur aged swamp is contaminating the oil? I just offer it as an alternate idea. No tinfoil hat.
Just saying. Which came first? Salt dome traps in SE Asia produce green, clear bunker grade oil with very few contaminants, unlike Texas Tea, which is high sulfur and black as a democrat's soul.
It's something to ponder.
This is an assessment of technically recoverable resources. The matter is complex. In general, resources are not reserves, because reserves also have an economic criteria added.
As of right now, all the shale fields in the US are declining oil output. This assessment of resources might never be tapped because horizontal drilling and fracking is almost always unprofitable. There have been 70 seperate fracking drillers to declare bankruptcy over the past 2 yrs. Oil was $110 in 2014 and since then the bankruptcies have avalanched.
Not a drop of this oil may ever reach the surface.
Oh, and as for the abiotic wackos, It Doesn’t Matter.
In 100 yrs oil has only been found in certain geostructures. It doesn’t matter how it got there. You can’t find it anywhere else, and those structures are running out.
The US burns about 20 million barrels of oil a day. X 365 is 7.3 billion barrels of oil per year. This ballyhooed USGS declaration is less than 3 yrs of US consumption.
No. Horizontal drilling and slick water fracking now permits recovery from shale deposits that were previously ignored
Yeah ‘cause there has never been anything organic in the ocean.
It’s not even a “discovery” this has been known for a decade at least. Government catching up to reality.
As for what you see in the Wolfcamp shale or the sprayberry, yes there are plenty of fossils, especially micro fossils you can see in cuttings bright up. The reef structures are clearly visible on 3D sysmic and indeed compressed coral and the like is found.
Source: I run an oil company and have worked the permian basin for 25 years.
Always has been. Always will until the core is no longer molten and the tectonic shifts cease altogether. I have held this position since a high school paper I did in 1967.
Yes lots of idiots got overleveraged in 2014.
The permian is economic at $45 oil for new drills if you have the right people. And of course you produce once drilled( and completed).
So no this oil is economic and will be recovered— by the smart survivors.
In fact the permsin remains the hottest basin in the world for acquisitions and has over half of the North American rigs on it,
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