[Qwackertoo]

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.

[ExTexasRedhead]

http://remembernovember.com/

[BealNoortz]

Two points.
1. I don't know where the $16 cost per barrel comes from. But Bakken oil is locked in dolomite, a concrete-like rock that needs expensive fracturing before it will give up its oil. I'd suspect that $50 a barrel cost is more like it. But even at that, the economics are good and there is an oil boom in western NoDakota which has given it the country's lowest unemployment rate.

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.