Posted on 03/30/2008 3:11:22 PM PDT by BMC1
BISMARCK, N.D. - The drilling frenzy in North Dakota's oil patch has now reached beneath the state's biggest lake.
Oil companies have begun tapping crude oil and gas underneath Lake Sakakawea, using advanced horizontal drill techniques.
Lynn Helms, the director of the state Department of Mineral Resources, said it was a logical extension to the formation known as the Middle Bakken, which lies two miles under the surface in western North Dakota and holds millions of barrels of oil.
Wells aiming for the Middle Bakken are drilled vertically to about 10,000 feet, and then "kick out" for as many feet horizontally. The technology has made huge advances in the past decade, industry officials say.
"Land underneath the lake now becomes accessible without having to locate a well in the lake or right on shore," Helms said. "It can be accessed at an environmentally acceptable distance."
The Army Corps of Engineers has approved three permits for drilling beneath the lake and has requests for at least six others, said Tim Kolke, a real estate manager at the corps' Riverdale office.
Kolke said he gets several inquiries daily from companies eyeing spots to drill beneath Lake Sakakawea.
Just a few months ago, he said, there was hardly any interest in drilling beneath the big lake. Now, nearly half his time is spent fielding requests and questions from oil companies.
Kolke said the federal government gets about $1,500 per well for "site disturbance," but it does not get any royalties from oil production.
Owners of mineral rights on private or tribal land along the lake would reap royalties if wells were drilled on that land, Kolke said.
Dallas-based Headington Oil Co. drilled a well under the lake
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Sorry, the page didn’t come up. Here’s link to the article.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/03/17/ap4781804.html
What, cannot grow corn at the bottom of a lake? Aren’t we suppose to just stop oil and die.
It’s really really stupid to use our food to make fuel when we have the oil.
It is even stupider to buy oil from Mexico drilled from the same gulf deposits which our enviro-wackos refuse to let us drill.
I can't be soon enough for me. I am so tired of sending our money to the Arabe, Mexicans, Venezuela etc. I want to tell them all to go pound sand.
When we cut off their money supply, we will also cut off their weapon supply.
Our "food" has been used to make alcohol for centuries. Think about it next time you poor yourself a Jack Daniels neat.
Want to know what the by product from making alcohol is? Animal feed!!!
The same applies to bio diesel made from canola and soy bean crops.
want to know what is really responsible for grain prices going up? The high input costs of FUEL and fertilizer, plus some greed on the trading floor of traders knowing that sheeple are stupid and will believe anything they are told.
“It’s really really stupid to use our food to make fuel when we have the oil.”
As long as Iowa is the 1st primary state, we will continue to look for silly ways to subsidize corn.
There’s no political party that is willing to tell Iowa that we’re cutting off the funds for all this waste.
We have oil an we don't need to use a single grain of anything to make bio fuel.
Absolutely, anything we can do to stop giving all our money to the Arabs who are keeping the taps closed in order to keep the prices high is fine with me. That includes ethanol and bio diesel production, which does NOT affect our food supply at all.
Of the food we import, half of it ends up in the trash.
There is no food shortage in this world, and much more of what is simply wasted can and should go into fuel production to eliminate our need for oil imports. Even if it costs more, that money stays in America instead of funding Jihad.
Sure we do. grain prices need to go up and anything that helps that happen, real or imagined, helps the farmer make a living WITHOUT being subsidized with our tax dollars. Grains have been used for fuel long before oil ever was, and oil will not last forever, so they say. we need to develop sustainable alternative fuel supplies like Bio diesel, which is good stuff.
How big is the oil reserve projected to be? Was this the same project I read about yesterday that said there was more potential oil than in Saudi Arabia? Look for the “environmentalists” to try to stop it.
LoL! I don't think we have to worry about that. There will always be a bootlegger somewhere with an alcohol fueled hopped up v8 in his pick up to keep you well supplied.
“we need to develop sustainable alternative fuel supplies like Bio diesel, which is good stuff.”
We need to use the hundreds of years of oil in California and make ethanol use in cars illegal!!
i raced with it for years and it’s a crappy substitute for gasoline if fuel milage is of value!
As far as a racing fuel goes, it's the best stuff. I've raced with it for years as well. Gas mileage isn't a concern when you have an endless renewable supply. You get about 2/3's the mileage compared to regular gasoline. It's also very clean burning, and would eliminate the smog problems in some large cities.
The factors that matter:
cost of production
rate of production
I have been drilling in the region for years now.
The reserves are in question, since the thickness of the Bakken formation vary greatly through out the region. Some estimates are that there are between 200 to 400 Billion barrels. The more realistic figure may be closer to 200. The crude is of a very high grade and the distillates are 130 octane and higher.
Time will tell and a renewed drilling effort is expected to increase by June of this year. The future does look very good there however.
I deliver the heaviest area of drilling going on right now. The drilling activity in that area is unbelievable. Nearly every hole being drilled is coming in big. Plus, the TAT (3 affiliated tribes) is in the process of getting the permits to build a refinery. Really exciting watching it all happening. Needless to say, there is no recession around here.
Where exactly in the Gulf of Mexico are the Mexicans producing oil from "deposits" that American companies are prohibited from drilling?
I have heard reports of estimates of 400 billion barrel reserves with about 200 billion recoverable.
Source?
Not to mention ethanol stinks. I refuse to put it in any of my vehicles. I like Big Oil! Oilmen don’t bitch and whine about the government not helping them enough.
I went with a buddy to Iron City Brewery to pick up food for cows up in Clarion County in Pa!!!
“We need to use the hundreds of years of oil in California and make ethanol use in cars illegal!!”
Please share the location of all that oil.
I grew up in Los Angeles in the 40s and 50s , people today don't even know what smog is.
The only people that it bothered were the immigrants from the east and I wisah it would have driven them back where they came from.
the Los Angeles basin, all the areas off the coast from the channel islands to the Mexican border, the central valley.
The only reason that you can go on any beach in So. Calif. is the wells on the islands above Santa Barbara, Long Beach, and Seal Beach.
Up until the mid 60s there was an oil slick from Golita to Mexico and every beach was covered with tar, the limited drilling that has been done relieved the gas pressure that was drivint thousands of barrels of oil through natural fissured to the surface.
In the 40s when I went to the beach the first stop whe I got home was the tin wash tub, kerrosene, and a scrub brush before I could come in the house.
upsdriver wrote:
Not to mention ethanol stinks. I refuse to put it in any of my vehicles. I like Big Oil! Oilmen don’t bitch and whine about the government not helping them enough.”
You know what, I have worried that my cars and trucks catalytic converters were getting old! That explains it! Or maybe thats just the stink off the three stooges running for president. Either way, it stinks.
Finally someone who doesn’t spout the Malthusian food for fuel crap.
But the subsidies are as high as ever even though wheat and corn are at 20 year high prices. As long as Iowa is the first primary this stupidity will continue.
Google it. Mexico (or more correctly, the oil companies leasing from Mexico) is setting up rigs just outside U.S. territorial waters over which the U.S. based enviro-wackos have no jurisdiction. Articles have been excepted and posted on Free Republic as well.
Are you in ND?
If you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake...
Can you point me to where you get that info from? grains.org doesnt do a good enough break down of its usages for my liking, however 1% is an extremely low number.
“Not to mention ethanol stinks. “
Well E85 seems like a good deal at 105 octane and at less than half the price of race gas. Had an engine on the dyno here last week the builder said there is no race gas in Bismarck right now. So we ran it on aviation 100LL, if the carb was set up right it would have run great on E85, probably cracked 500chp too. I would really like to play with E85, I think it would be ideal for HP use here in ND as it is available. What I wonder is how much is sold and if it will continue to be available. Would hate to build an engine for E85 and then see it discontinued because of low demand.
we could be doing this out in the middle of freaking nowhere so that it couldn’t possibly harm even a single human being or anything alive above the plankton level of existence.....but hey, drilling under your local lake seem a lot more logical huh?
no chance of a giant sinkhole sucking your ‘largest lake’ into the states largest valley is there? And don’t we have a couple of Democrat US Senators from that state who oppose drilling in the frozen tundra of ANWR???? I just....can’t.....remember.... I guess they are ‘pro drilling’ but anti-drilling in somebody elses backyard. That’s sure a funny twist on the NIMBY rule.
“Less than 1% of the grains, corn and soy grown is used for human food consumption. All that hype about ethanol causing food prices to go up is just pure BS.”
To make such sweeping statement, you really should supply some links.
But the biggest use of grain is probably to produce food indirectly: beef, pork, chicken, milk, eggs, farm raised fish.
And yes, the of grain to produce ethanol has definitely increased the price of animal feed, and therefore it’s raised the price of most all meat, milk and eggs consumed by humans. As well as bread, flour, cornmeal.
Examples: the highest prices I’d ever seen for eggs until recently was $1.09 for jumbo eggs. Now, extra large are $2.50 per dozen. Five pound bags of flour have just about doubled to around $2.50.
the corn farmers in Iowa apparently disagree with you since they are growing corn for the specific purpose of selling it to ethanol refineries. The only change in the last 24 months is the creation of dozens of ethanol refineries in the midwest. There is no increase in the amount of actual consumption for either human food or animal feed. Sorry.
The massive speculative market created for grains we’ve seen in 2008 is BECAUSE of the increased demand for ethanol (which was increased as a mandate from Congress in the ‘energy bill’ in 2007). The traders know that more corn will have to be put into ethanol production whether anybody wants it so the bottleneck allows tremendous volatility in trading.
Ethanol is a giant scam. Like ‘carbon trading’ and ‘global warming’. A handful of people are getting rich and the rest of the country is picking up the tab. It need to end.
The areas you mention have been through primary and secondary recovery, already.
Plus many are so densely built up with homes, that further oil production is not practical.
If new fields were to be discovered offshore, I seriously doubt public opinion would allow drilling.
I technology could overcome the unsightliness and environmental risks, it would be winner offshore.
Trivia question: What does THUMS (Long Beach) stand for?
Are you saying that there are waters off the Texas Gulf coast where drilling in prohibited?
“want to know what is really responsible for grain prices going up? The high input costs of FUEL and fertilizer, plus some greed on the trading floor of traders knowing that sheeple are stupid and will believe anything they are told.”
That’s what the pro-ethanol people are saying. But a common sense look at things would say that is false.
I am all for prosperity for rural America. But the tax subsidized ethanol method is foolish.
It is injected inflation all through the food chain. Taxpayers are paying for ethanol multiple times. Through tax subsidies, higher food costs, etc.
I would fine with ethanol if agriculture functioned without tax subsidies and price supports.
The worst thing is that our nation is still not doing anything to solve our dependence on foreign oil. We are noy building nuclear power plants or oil refineries as we should be doing. Or drilling in Alaska, Florida, and other places
Sound’s pretty optomistic....maybe 8 billion barrels.
It almost seems like those reporting on this oil field don’t understand how significant it is:
“That deep iceberg of oil in the Bakken formation is situated like a horseshoe, dropped irregularly on the northwest quadrant of the state and covering more than 24,000 square miles. The Bakken’s oil reserve could contain as much as 200 billion to 400 billion barrels of oil, which makes the 1.6 billion barrels produced in all of state history so far seem like a proverbial drop in the bucket.
The size of the reserve is under study by both the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources and the U.S. Geological Survey, with the new numbers expected out in the next two months. But records for state oil production and number of new wells permitted are teetering now.”
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2008/02/14/news/local/148870.txt
200 - 400 billion barrels is a massive reserve, but it seems little is said about it. We hear far more about “peak oil” and how soon the world’s demand for oil will not be met. Seems we’re not being given a complete story on the potential for more oil production in the future.
Well time to check with a lawyer. Grandmother passed the mineral rights to the old ND homestead to my mom and who then passed them on to me.
” unsightliness and environmental risks”
There’s nothing unsightly about oil islands/platforms and there is certainly no or very little risk. Even if they had a blowout the amount of oil put into the ocean (which doesn’t really hurt anything) wouldn’t equal the natural daily flow up until the 60s.
the only well in the L.A, basin that has been drilled to any depth is by Occidental in west L. A. and those wells have been producing steadly since they were drilled.
According to the Union Oil execs. who I had lunch with at least once a month at little Joes they had 800 years supply if consimption doubled every 10 years.
The biggest thing that shut down prodduction was Carters 10% “excess profit tax” which was a wellhead tax and had nothing to do with profit.
When all taxes added (published and hidden) are 86% no one in their right mind would use their own oil when they can give that tax on Arab oil.
When Joe shell, president os the Independant Oil Producers of Calif. in 1974, had 3 wildcats underway in the central valley and Carters tax was put into effect BofA called him up and jerked his loans saying “ no matter how good the wells are they can never make a profit with the current tax structure”.
Try 10% and most of that is things that do not grow well in US climate such as coffee, tea, spices, certain fruits and such.
We also import non-traditional food that have not yet developed into a stable market such as goat meat.
This particular article involves China and Cuba drilling in international waters off the coast of Florida while the enviro-wackos won't allow drilling in our own waters nearby.
Now you try it, but input Mexico rather than Cuba.
Probably more than 10%, but much less than 72%. Check your labels at a local Sam’s Club— lots of food from South America (grapes from Chile, peaches from Brazil) which are being harvested there now due to seasonality. I suspect Chile will be importing grapes from California six months from now.
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