Posted on 03/20/2008 10:40:42 PM PDT by neverdem
Oil drillers have their eye on a vast oil field in and around North Dakota, which promises a steady flow of domestic crude for years.
A new black gold rush is under way, this time in North Dakota. The potential payoff is huge -- up to 100 billion barrels of oil. That’s twice the size of Alaska’s reserves and potentially enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for two decades.
Until now, the obstacles to production seemed overwhelming. The crude oil is locked away in rocks that are buried miles underground in the Bakken Play, a field that stretches into Montana and Saskatchewan, Canada.
But times have changed. High oil prices and new technology make it worth the effort. Computer analysis and remote sensing systems, plus smart drills that can probe horizontally or snake left and right, vastly improve the odds of locating new pools and putting them into production. And though oil is unlikely to remain priced at current stratospheric levels, prices won’t drop to much lower levels, which happened several times since the 1970s, and cause new exploration to dry up. Even if prices fell by half, many barrels of oil could still be produced -- profitably -- from the region.
An official government survey of the Bakken region's oil treasure trove is due out next month. The report is expected to play it very conservatively, because it will confine estimates to the amount of oil that likely can be produced profitably based on last year’s oil prices. It will also not take into account any further technological advances that might make it even easier to extract more oil.
"The Bakken is much like the enormous natural gas field that sat for many years under and around Dallas until people figured out the geology and how to drill it out economically," says Lucian Pugliaresi, president of the Energy Policy Research Foundation.
There's at least a smell of the "Old West" as petroleum companies rush to stake their claims in the Bakken Play. Marathon Oil recently acquired about 200,000 acres in the area and will drill about 300 oil wells within five years. Brigham Exploration and Crescent Point Energy Trust are also interested in some of the action. EOG Resources alone figures it can produce 80 million barrels of oil from its Bakken field.
Figure on at least five years before the oil starts flowing in large volumes. A lot of work will need to be done first. In addition to installing drilling gear, firms must build supporting infrastructure, including roads, pipelines as well as new water, sewage and sanitation systems to meet the needs of workers and other area residents.
Note that the Bakken Play region is not an environmentally sensitive area similar to Alaskan tundra that has stymied much oil field development because of concerns about damage to the fragile environment. Still, some environmental protests are sure to emerge and may gum up development for a while, but they’re unlikely to stop oil production from the Bakken fields.
I guarantee you Obama or Hilary will declare this a National Park.
Gee, I seem to see a story like this two or three times a year. We keep finding more oil, Who’d believe that.
Some how, some way the Greens will NEVER let us use it.
ping
something like at $90/barrel, it would be worth 18 trillion to our economy.. wow..
NEWS BULLETIN April 1, 2009
President Hillary Clinton signs an executive order creating the Bakken Play National Monument. President Clinton in the ceremony attended by the Ambasssadors of Saudi Arabia and China along with the executive boards of Greenpeace and WWF stressed the importance of preserving the natural beauty of this part of North Dakota. This ends any possibility of drilling for what some estimate is 500 billion barrels of oil in the region.
Some how, some way the Greens will NEVER let us use it.
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not as long as all those who currently sell us oil from abroad are allowed to support econuts&politicos here and get away with it..
Trust me, as soon as the enviro-nuts get wind of this, it will be.
Start slant drilling immediately and steal the part in Canada. Suck it dry. Then start on our part
B.S.
We will not be allowed to touch it.
Oil companies OWN this nation.
If it dislodges one speckled furbish lousewort, the price is too high.
Huge Oil Field, Right Here in US!
21-Mar-2008
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=6769
When we think of oil reserves in the US, we think about coal. But it turns out that America may be sitting on a huge, 200 billion barrel oil field that has gone unnoticed and could make us energy independent.
New drilling technology could make it possible to pump the oil from the Bakken Formation, which covers North Dakota and parts of South Dakota and Montana. According to Next Energy News, “The US imported about 14 million barrels of Oil per day in 2007 , which means US consumers sent about $340 Billion Dollars over seas building palaces in Dubai and propping up unfriendly regimes around the World, if 200 billion barrels of oil at $90 a barrel are recovered in the high plains the added wealth to the US economy would be $18 Trillion Dollars which would go a long way in stabilizing the US trade deficit and could cut the cost of oil in half in the long run.”
Maybe this is why the Middle East is investing in solar energy!
Corsi’s a geologist now?
If W doesn't beat 'em to it...
Why would oil companies NOT want to sell this oil to it’s consumers?
But I heard that we were going to run out of oil in 20 years....30 years ago!
Just to screw with us. That's more important to them than making an honest buck.
[/economically illiterate conspiracist tinfoil blather]
“I guarantee you Obama or Hilary will declare this a National Park.”
Sadly, you can add no-to-ANWR-McCain to your list. It’s really the pits having three dems and no Republicans this year.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSS
Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela can shove it up their tailpipes.
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Your post is one of the varied reasons I love Free Republic.
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They do sell oil to consumers.
But at greatly infalted prices.
They do so by limiting,stalling and or disrupting production.
I recall reading something about oil and gas drilled in Alaska being shipped to Japan and Asia as that was more cost efficient than shipping it to the lower 48.
Nothing says love like a bouquet of furbish louseworts. Diamonds optional, strictly optional, but . . . yeah, better throw in diamonds.
Attention Environazis...
You people are screwing up BIG time. Get your butts out to North Dakota and find some endangered species.
MOVE!!! NOW!!!!!
Diamonds, definitely optional.. lol
You’re all heart.
Is it on Federal land? If not, then it’ll be tough for the airheads in DC to stop this one.
Not in collusion but just as commodity investors typically are, they are in sync.
Just as a wise real estate developer holds and waits to sell property as it rises, so do oil companies.
What’s better 500 billion barrels at $25.00 or $100?
Let me guess, you as a Citizen of Texas, which is a Republic, are 100% against ANY AND ALL efforts to research, implement,investigate any and all forms of alternative fuels.
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And in other news.....
U.S. Refiners May Cut Gasoline Output on Weak Profit(Weak Profit? Huh?)
Reuters ^ | Mar 19, 2008 8:26pm GMT | Rebekah Kebede
Posted on 03/20/2008 10:23:35 PM PDT by kellynla
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1989238/posts
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The greenies are having a stroke.
Vaughn Palmer Vancouver Sun
Thursday, March 06, 2008
VICTORIA - When the provincial government tallied up the results of the recent sale of oil and gas drilling rights, it discovered one of the happiest bits of good news for the B.C. Liberals so far this year.
The February sale brought in $117 million for the rights to drill for oil and gas on 50,000 hectares of Crown land.
Not a record. But the seventh-best return from a monthly sale and five times the take from the February sale last year.
Moreover, the results included the first portent of what is expected to be a full-blown rush to buy up drilling rights in a just-becoming-known enclave in northeastern B.C.
About half the proceeds from the February sale were for rights in the Horn River Basin, an undeveloped region east of the Liard Highway and north of the Fort Nelson River that is believed to contain vast reserves of shale gas.
Shale gas being one of the so-called "unconventional sources" of natural gas, where the resource is trapped within permeable sedimentary rock.
Shale gas, though more expensive to release than conventional sources, has been successfully developed in Texas (the highly productive Barnett formation) and elsewhere, though not, to date, in British Columbia.
All that is about to change. The first confirmation came just days after the government put out the figures on the February sale.
The news broke late last week at a conference in Texas, where Houston-based EOG Resources trumpeted the results from four experimental wells drilled on its properties in the Horn River Basin.
"A really, really big deal," EOG chairman Mark Papa said as he calculated the company's holdings could contain as much as six trillion cubic feet of gas.
The potential size of the find, being roughly 10 per cent of Canada's proven reserves, wasn't long in galvanizing the oil and gas sector.
"B.C. shale home to huge gas reserve," headlined the Calgary Herald, hometown paper in the country's petroleum capital. "EGO Resources find may rival Texas deposit."
The Globe and Mail followed with an equally enthusiastic report on the potential for the Horn River Basin.
"Gas players gear up for B.C. rush," the Report on Business predicted Monday. "Huge discoveries in northeast ignite 'massive land grab' for drilling rights."
The B.C. Liberals were happy to bask in good news.
"It's tremendous for British Columbia and for the northeast part of the province," Energy Minister Richard Neufeld told The Sun's Jonathan Fowlie.
The natural gas sector has soared in recent years, doubling drilling activity and increasing royalties to the province by a factor of five, according to Neufeld.
Commodity prices have a lot to do with it. But the province can take some credit as well, with a series of measures dating back to the previous New Democratic Party government.
The current incentives, though controversial, include such plausible measures as discounts for drilling in the more expensive off-season, for developing deeper (hence more expensive) wells and for continuing to exploit wells beyond what would otherwise be the point of no economic returns.
The Liberals have also moved to recognize the higher up-front cost of exploiting shale gas. B.C. last year adopted a discount royalty structure, including a lower levy on shale gas until the capital cost of drilling the wells is recovered.
Some industry insiders have counselled caution about the potential for shale gas development in the Horn River Basin.
The area is remote. The ground can only be worked when it is frozen. The technology for tapping shale gas is still being developed. Gas prices need to remain high to underwrite the extra cost of drilling.
But there's general agreement that however the basin plays out in the years ahead, companies will take a flyer on it by snapping up all available drilling rights.
The next opportunities will be the scheduled sales on March 26 and April 23. The offerings on those dates include about 80,000 hectares in the Horn River Basin, which are expected to fetch several thousand dollars a hectare.
Great news for the provincial treasury because the buyers of drilling rights pay up-front, whether or not they find anything or, indeed, whether they ever drill.
Over the years, the sale of drilling rights has become one of the most painless and lucrative sources of provincial revenue, bringing in an average of half a billion dollars a year over a decade.
Last year provided the greatest windfall yet, just over $1 billion. To put those dollars into perspective, think of enough money to run Pharmacare. Or to cover most of the cost of child care services. Or the combined costs of policing, corrections and the courts.
For all the setting of targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the province can't afford to wean itself off revenues from the oil and gas sector any time soon.
vpalmer@direct.ca
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
Really, think that response over. Yeah the oil companies would hate this idea.
The America hating greens will make up exotic insect species to keep us from drilling. Not to mention the Middle East cash that will flow to Obama and company to shut down such an operation.
Even if the price drops to $40/barrel, this would still be $8-trillion. Plus this could add a whole bunch of new jobs to the US economy. They could put some new refineries up in North Dakota to process this oil, which would add thousands of good-paying jobs.
numbnut, oil is sold on the open market. I have a strawbery farm down the street, when I go to the store, the strawberries are from California. Same concept. If we drill more here, it will cut our trade deficit, but it is late and I don’t feel like explaining it. Some other freeper take over
It likely would create a boomlet on the Plains , for sure..
It will be worth more 5 years from now than today.
And the tech will be better.
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