Posted on 03/28/2008 9:59:13 AM PDT by a real Sheila
America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.
In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated
(Excerpt) Read more at nextenergynews.com ...
Bob any comments?
I guess the Clintons missed their chance to declare the Bakken reserve a national scenic treasure or whatever, like the one in Utah. sloppy sloppy sloppy.
The problem is that the way they get the nuke plants on subs and carriers so compact is by using weapons-grade (>90% U-235) uranium as fuel, versus the 3% civilian grade
If you're carrying nuclear weapons anyway, there is no need for additional security for the fuel. It's very different in a civilian setting. You cannot use military nuke plants in an unsecured civilian environment
I have been reading many of your posts on this thread, and I have to say that you are either grossly ignorant or patently misinformed about this subject.
The Bakken Shale’s in the region, average about 10,000 to 9500 vertical feet in depth. The formation temperatures average around 270 to 300 degrees at those depths so heating the product is absolutely not necessary.
Secondly, the oil and gas found there is of the very highest grade. It is the equivalent to Saudi Gold and the distillates are 130 octane or higher.
Thirdly, production is frequently induced by Fracking the formation and the product is pumped from the wells by standard surface methods.
The Bakken shale’s are also not the only target production zone. The Three Forks, just below the Bakken, is also a strong producer in many areas dominated by the Bakken.
The total volume estimates are incomplete, but recent estimates based on actual production, will come in close the the later 2oo billion barrel estimate. This may be more or less since the formation varies in thickness greatly from region to region.
Dog Gone defined the Bakken shale play, and all the current "red hot shale plays" quite succintcly in his comment above. High commodity prices, new (expensive) horizontal drilling technology, innovative frac techniques and constantly improving 3D seismic have all come together at the right time to open several new Shale Plays.
The over-hyped Barnett (IMHO), Fayetteville and Marcellus shale plays are all legitimate huge finds in natural gas, that have not even begun to deliver anywhere near their capacity, and their are others such as Floyd, Conasauga, New Albany, Palo Dura, W.TX Barnett that all hold great promise.
I've seen some mind-numbing numbers recently in the Barnett central on production and lease sales that make me believe it is somewhat over-hyped, but I'm just a dumb ol'landman.
I'm not at all surprised at the Bakken finally making the numbers I've been hearing for over 20 years, but the 200-500 BILLION barrels of projected reserves seem a bit optimistic.
The only real question to overall price relief for consumers is whether we can drill these finds fast enough to keep pace with demand. Then again, if commodity prices crater, you will see a similar drop off in rig usage because the high cost of drilling these wells cannot be supported with $3.00 per mcf gas and $50 crude. It's a vicious world out there but we be a tryin' our best to bring it to market.
Thanks....
The truth is that high oil and gas prices encourage the oil and gas companies to find new and different ways to find the oil and gas.
There are many Freepers who think that the high prices are are the result of some conspiracy to keep supply off the market. That couldn’t be more false.
Any oil company wouldn’t care if the others curtailed production or drilling activity, but the simple fact is that each is highly motivated to find and produce as much at these price levels as they can possibly afford.
I don’t know how many booms and busts in the industry that I’ve endured. Probably at least ten. Right now is a boom. Maybe something has fundamentally changed with the awakening of China and India and the increased demand for energy, but I haven’t seen a boom that didn’t with a bust yet.
The only fundamental change that I can tell, is that the floor has moved up a notch or two. Other than that, it is interesting that you mention the busts that we've all gone through, way too many times. I've been talking a lot about that recently with several friends that have been in the business, like me, for 25-30 years. We're all a little concerned that the signs of a crater are becoming increasingly familiar with past crashes. The natural gas end scares me a lot more than crude plays do, particularly since all my projects have tended to be 90/10 weighted in gas plays.
Ah well, it is always fun. Gotta sign off now for a conference call with my co-conspirators in an effort to figure out how we can keep driving up crude, natural gas and most particularly, gasoline prices. Love to sting all those whinin' FReepers that know what I'm up to.
It's been one of the stumbling points on such a project for years. You can't justify building the pipeline on what the current prices are. You have to justify it on what prices will be when you suddenly flood the market with North Slope natural gas.
It's been a Catch-22. Your own success is the cause of your own failure.
You nailed it.
The prairie dog is about to be placed on the Endangered Species List so that we can’t touch the entire area..... /s
Have you looked at what is going on in Montague, Clay, and Archer Counties in Texas?
http://www.topix.com/content/kri/2008/02/in-shift-eog-interested-in-barnett-shale-oil
That is essentially true but this isn’t cheap. Well costs are $7,000,000.
Those numbers are in-place. Recovery efficiency is around 10%.
Some people think we may have been vastly mistaken in our assumptions regarding the original source of the oil and we actually don’t know where it came from. If so, it may be that oil is produced by a process which is still on-going, and it may not be an exhaustible resource at all.
That's the abiotic theory. The Russians are leading proponents and have apparently made some significant finds in areas where oil should not be found using biotic theory.
The jury is still out on this one, but it would make things very interesting if true. Do a web search on "abiotic oil" and you should find plenty of information.
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