- Read FAQs about the Bakken Formation.
- Listen to a podcast with the lead scientist on this topic.
Posted on 04/25/2010 6:13:37 AM PDT by Clint Williams
Subject: US oil
Wake up America - - - makes you wonder what we are waiting for!!!! More oil kings having solid white gold Mercedes built with American money????
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Reston, VA - North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.
A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.
Related Podcasts |
3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Oil in North Dakota and Montana |
Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources.
New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger technically recoverable oil volumes. About 105 million barrels of oil were produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007.
The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000.
The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A "continuous" oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest "continuous" oil accumulation in the U.S. is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1.0 billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil.
"It is clear that the Bakken formation contains a significant amount of oil - the question is how much of that oil is recoverable using today's technology?" said Senator Byron Dorgan, of North Dakota. "To get an answer to this important question, I requested that the U.S. Geological Survey complete this study, which will provide an up-to-date estimate on the amount of technically recoverable oil resources in the Bakken Shale formation."
The USGS estimate of 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil has a mean value of 3.65 billion barrels. Scientists conducted detailed studies in stratigraphy and structural geology and the modeling of petroleum geochemistry. They also combined their findings with historical exploration and production analyses to determine the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil estimates.
USGS worked with the North Dakota Geological Survey, a number of petroleum industry companies and independents, universities and other experts to develop a geological understanding of the Bakken Formation. These groups provided critical information and feedback on geological and engineering concepts important to building the geologic and production models used in the assessment.
Five continuous assessment units (AU) were identified and assessed in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana - the Elm Coulee-Billings Nose AU, the Central Basin-Poplar Dome AU, the Nesson-Little Knife Structural AU, the Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and the Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU.
At the time of the assessment, a limited number of wells have produced oil from three of the assessments units in Central Basin-Poplar Dome, Eastern Expulsion Threshold, and Northwest Expulsion Threshold.
The Elm Coulee oil field in Montana, discovered in 2000, has produced about 65 million barrels of the 105 million barrels of oil recovered from the Bakken Formation.
Results of the assessment can be found at http://energy.usgs.gov.
For a podcast interview with scientists about the Bakken Formation, listen to episode 38 of CoreCast at http://www.usgs.gov/corecast/.
USGS provides science for a changing world. For more information, visit www.usgs.gov.
Subscribe to USGS News Releases via our electronic mailing list or RSS feed.
**** www.usgs.gov ****
Links and contacts within this release are valid at the time of publication.
It's just we have way to many liberals spinning their energy independence lies.
Coal can be turned into liquid fuel for less than $30 barrel equivalent. If oil supplies are a national security threat, as liberals like to say, then why is oil more than $30 a barrel? And shouldn't we be building coal to liquids refineries like China is right now?
Just another of these huge in your face America lies liberals tell with impunity, the lame stream media never seems to get around to printing the truth do they.
My favorite liberal lies are ones like Jimmy “the dumb” Carter telling the American people that by the year 2000 the earth would be out of oil, not one drop left.
The 2nd question: Who owns them?
Answers: The Federal Government aka China
Thanks for this information. I’ve been out of working in the oil & gas industry for many years to become a Stay-At-Home-Mom and remember all our district offices in these areas of the West. Things were booming when oil was around 40 a barrel and then the bottom dropped out to less than 10. That killed a lot of exploration programs way back then.
Very interesting, gotta show this one to my hubby.
Um, 3 to 4.3 billion barrels of oil <> 503 billion stated at the top of your article.
???
Technically recoverable is not the same thing as economically recoverable. Oil shale starts to become economic when oil hits around $80 per bbl. As soon as the price goes over 80 you start to hear all kinds of news about oil shales in Canada and the western US. When the price drops below 80, not a word. The Williston basin has been active in exploration and production for decades.
When President Sarah is in charge, we’re going to make so much money off of our own God-given natural resources it’s gonna make the heads of the LibTards spin clean off, LOL!
2. The environmental radicals and their liberal politician supporters are at it already. They are trying to prove that the rock fracturing process is polluting the groundwater supplies. If they can stop the fracturing, they can stop the oil. So far the people of North Dakota are having none of it. But don't underestimate the power of the environmental nutcases under the current Democratic control of Washington.
Can't find it in those links either. Where does the 503 billion barrel number come from?
A lot of this info came out in the summer of 2008 when we all were saying “Drill, Baby, Drill”.
Let’s all take a deep breath ...
OKay, start here: www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/bakken.asp
Certainly, we gotta lotta the stuff deep down in the ground, and the Enviro-whackos have done their damnedest to keep it there as a perpetual monument to the unlimited potential scope of human stupidity, AND the OPECs and other producers of the world DO have a vested interest in maintaining this status quo.
But ...
The arithmetic in this reportage is, to say the least, amusing. It just don’t add up and all the heavy breathing in the world ain’t gonna fix it.
Finally, I recently read somewhere on the hallowed pages of this here very site that ALL the proven reserves everywhere in the world represent only a tiny — VERY tiny — fraction of the stuff that lies deep down there; we just haven’t found it yet due to technical limitations on the finding, NOT any depletion or lack of the stuff to begin with.
F’rinstance, there seems to be FAR more oil in shale deposits than in ALL the pools under rocks and sand. An we haven’t even BEGUN to look under that 75% or so of the Earth that happens to sit under water. Less than 1% of it has even been looked at, let alone exploited.
What’s wrong is that we’re sending our money to the Saudis and a bunch of other folks who hate us and want us dead or worse, buying for a stiff premium what we could be claiming out of our own reserves. That just makes them stronger, economically, and makes us weaker. Unnecessary and VERY stupid ...
One man’s opinion ...
21stCenturion
[Technically recoverable is not the same thing as economically recoverable. Oil shale starts to become economic when oil hits around $80 per bbl.]
I don’t know where you get your $80 from. As a money manager I own Suncor for some clients. According to their latest earnings report, they are saying it costs a little over $30 per barrel to produce.
Bakken is producing and the quality of the crude is very high so refining costs will be low as well.
I was chatting with a guy at the supermarket about a year ago. He had been a hydraulic engineer for 25 years - at Prudhoe Bay. I knew he knew what he was talking about.
He said that what they tell you is there is just a drop in the bucket compared to what’s really there. He saw the surveyors coming back in every day with samples they took from offshore and the stuff was pure gold - light, sweet crude, it was so pure it looked like Wesson oil or something!
And it’s almost unheard of - it NEVER happens - that they sink a pipe and the oil doesn’t start coming up under pressure.
Pretty much just what Linsey Williams says. Probably 500 years worth at present consumption rates right under our noses.
What happens if you go to Snopes and type in “snopes”?
Does it come back with “A bullshit website that has been discredited so many times it’d make your head spin”?
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