Massive Oil Deposit Could Increase US reserves by 10x

Next Energy News ^ | 2-13-08 | unknown

[richardtavor]

Actually, the western edge of the play (Montague Co.) is a developing Oil play (also by EOG.) I threw in Barnett, Woodford and Fayettville because they are source rock plays. These are the formations that we drilled through in the seventies and eighties to get to the “good stuff.) We had good shows when we drilled through them, but technology wouldn't allow us to complete them commercially. None of us (except maybe George Mitchell ever thought that it would be commercial.

[paleorite]

—That’s true, but if really huge new sources were developed outside of OPEC, the law of supply and demand dictates the price would drop.—

Which is why the oil industry never runs commercials about the benefits of drilling in ANWR or the coasts, but runs lots of drivel about being “green.”

[Young Werther]

Your preaching to the preacher! I was assigned to the DEW Line in 1969. I traveled from Alaska to Greenland! I visited the first oilwell that had been drilled and the oil was "flowing". actually they had to cap the well until a pipeline could be built.

In May of that year I was at a DEWLIne site where I could observe the spring migration of the caribou herds. It was a magnificent migration as they came down out of the Brooks Range.

The herd, that year was estimated to be about 24,000. The most recent census is about 125,000. Why the increase?

The oil pipeline had to be elevated since the oil comes out of the ground at 300 degrees F since the oil strata is over a magma pocket.

Park rangers noticed that after the pipeline was built the caribou, who are much smarter than the envirowackos!, would stay huddled under the pipe during their winter stay up in the Brooks range meadows. Caribou live longer, less infant mortality, and so it goes. More fox, wolves, rabbits, birds and all attributed to the pipeline!

Drill in the ANWAR is the answer!

[Eaker]

I was here during the War of Northern Aggression.

Just under a different screen name.

Those were some wild times here at FR.

[woollyone]

Well...maybe Saint Hillary can run out real quick after getting elected and declare the entire area Grand Staircase Escalande II...that way all that oil will be nice and safe, OPEC will be secure in it’s wealth, and the bunnies will feel all warm and fuzzy.

...in a perfectly bizzaro world

[kinghorse]

And ask them what happens when the natural gas runs out.

[q_an_a]

The real problem is that the oil and gas industry and the RNC are terrible at telling their respecive stories. Oil and gas could expalin that the whole world is drilling and that our offshore oil would lower the cost of driving. The RNC could tell the public that 20 years of a never ending system of YELLING Stop no Drilling in America by the democrats has fiunally caused our gas prices to go through the roof.

We have plenty of oil at Chushing OK and the refineries are running at 83% - the price of gas should drop like a stone if every we had pricing based upon true supply and demand.

[kinghorse]

What I mean by that is one is used to extract the other. Oil extraction in Alberta’s a complicated business dependent upon the supply of gas and hot water to make it work.

[kinghorse]

still takes something pressurized to get it moving. that’s the big problem I presume.

[kcm.org]

thanx—have a great one:-)

[SAJ]

I should certainly hope so. However, as other posters have pointed out, Smokin' Joe is the man to ask about the Bakken. He's been working in the 'awl bidness' there for years, knows what's going on there vand what's likely to **be** going on in future.

FReegards!

[Kellis91789]

A “credible threat” has to have teeth. That means actual capital investment in recovery. Enough capital investment to make a offset significant demand from OPEC might be hundreds of billions of dollars.

That is what is being invested into oil sands recovery in Alberta Canada, and the end result still won’t be much output compared to OPEC.

Private enterprise is afraid to invest too rapidly and build recovery capacity too rapidly, because they risk OPEC doing exactly what you say — dumping cheap oil on the markets to drive the domestics into bankruptcy. It would be good for consumers of oil to get lower prices, but bad for the investors that spent money on infrastructure that is then unprofitable.

I think a possible solution would be for the Federal government to place an open bid for domestically produced oil — say a billion barrels per year guaranteed to renew for 20 years — at a price high enough to yield a profit to the oil companies in the event they cannot sell it for more than that on the world markets. If oil companies were guaranteed a buyer-of-last-resoort at $35, then their investment in infrastructure couldn’t go down the tubes by something OPEC does. The Federal government would only actually buy the oil if the oil company couldn’t sell it for more than that. In that event, the government would take a loss when they had to buy it at $35 and then sell it themselves for less. The maximum loss would be $35B/yr, but for that to happen the market price of oil would have to have hit ZERO. Obviously not going to happen. It likely wouldn’t cost the taxpayer much if anything, but it might influence the market by protecting domestic oil producers from OPEC dumping cheap oil on the markets to drive the domestics into bankruptcy.

[Marysecretary]

Hi, preacher! Glad to know what I said was right! Wish Congress had such good information (LOL). They don’t really care about our country. They have their own agenda (communist/socialist) and they don’t want to hear the truth.
I appreciate your story. M

[DakotaNative]

I am from Minot, ND and have a brother who has been working in the oil fields in the Williston basin for over 20 years. He has indicated that they basically drilled and capped all wells. In the past 2 years his company began drilling in and around Parshal, ND. Just two weeks ago he indicated that they recently brought in a well that was an old fashion gusher - I believe he indicated that it brought in over 3,000 barrells a day. Senator Dorgan (hold your nose - lib dem and clinton apologist) has been trying to get this report on the oil fields out into the public for over three years. Of course his goal is to keep getting elected and to bring economic development to a state that is losing people. Regardless, from what I can tell this appears to be true. The challenge they have in that area of the country is that the oil has to be trucked to Canada to be refined or to other US areas further away. From what I know the enviromental lobby is resisting this. There was talk of the Native Tribes building a refinery on one of the reservations (I think Standing Rock) to get around the environmental rules that may not apply to them. Finally, he pulls in well over $100k a year as a laborer and they (drilling companies) cannot find enough labor. He has taken his income and formed a construction company and is renovating homes and building apartments to accommodate the trickle of new workers into the Minot area. Don't you love America and the entrepreneurial opportunities it gives everyone regardless of background?

[a real Sheila]

I’m surprised the enviro-wackos are not saying “The carribou numbers are too HIGH thanks to the pipeline and many are now STARVING to death!

[a real Sheila]

Is that the temp for all oil when it comes out of the ground? How come you don’t see folks running and screaming from being scalded in film footage of oil workers being showered by a gusher?

[JDinAustin]

Its a gas play but thats not to say that oil is not there. So far its only a minor oil find but at 90+ a barrel even a couple of hundred thousand barrels if shallow enough is economical. Coil on Tube rigs real are revolutionizing shallow horizontal well drilling.

[Young Werther]

The DEW Line sites were a little bit of home on the desolate tundra. Many's the night that oil workers an geologists would stop by the site for a beer and some companionship.

I remember a geologist who was describing the oil strata. It seems that below the oil strata the was a tear in the Earth's Mantel and a pocket of magma had formed. The strata was such that this magma never made it to the surface to form a volcano. However, it did heat the oil! This was an unusual circumstance geologically speaking. Not all oil strata are the same.

[SauronOfMordor]

usually takes more energy (hot water) to heat the stuff up and get it moving than is economically justified. It’s the same as trying to get the bacon grease down the trap. Hot water makes the job easy.

Install a small nuke plant, and you will have all the steam you would ever want to keep the oil moving

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See this thread from 2006:

North Dakota may be bigger oil player than Alaska

Bismarck Tribune ^ | 20 June '06 | LAUREN DONOVAN

****************************EXCERPT INTRO********************

A geologist who estimated the Bakken formation in western North Dakota has far more oil than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge died before other scientists could authenticate his study.

Leigh Price, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, published a study in 1999 that estimates the Bakken shales formation, which underlies much of several western and northwestern counties, may hold up to 400 billion barrels of oil.

By comparison, the Arctic refuge oil reserve is estimated at 16 billion barrels.

Now, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., is pushing the federal agency to complete scientific work on Price’s paper as part of a national inventory of the nation’s oil resources.

The Bakken formation is being developed to some extent in North Dakota, but with better success so far on the Montana side of the formation.

Recently, Marathon Oil, a major national and international oil developer, acquired 200,000 mineral acres from Billings to McKenzie counties and plans to drill as many as 300 wells into the Bakken in the next five years.