Posted on 4/11/2008, 1:23:09 AM by neverdem
BISMARCK, North Dakota (AP) - The U.S. government estimated Thursday that up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana, using current technology.
The U.S. Geological Survey called it the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.
The Bakken Formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles (64,750 sq. kilometers) in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, in three layers. About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles (3 kilometers) beneath the surface. Companies use pressurized fluid and sand to break pores in the rock and prop them open to recover the oil.
North Dakota's entire oil production hit 137,000 barrels a day in January, the latest figures available. Industry officials believe the state's record production of 148,500 barrels a day, set in 1984, will be surpassed this year.
Donald Kessel, vice president of Houston-based Murex Petroleum Corp., said he believes the Geological Survey's assessment of how much oil can be recovered in the Bakken may be a little on the high side.
"That's a lot of zeros,'' Kessel said Thursday.
Kessel said his company was the first to get a producing well in the Bakken in North Dakota three years ago. The company now has about 20 producing wells.
The report released Thursday by USGS was done at the request of Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan over the past 18 months.
A 1995 study by the USGS found 151 million barrels of oil could be recovered from the Bakken using technology at that time. "This is great news,'' Dorgan said of the new report. "This is 25 times the amount of the previous assessment.''
Oilmen have known for more than 50 years that the Bakken holds vast oil reserves, Kessel said. But the price has never pushed demand high enough to develop technology to capture the oil, he said.
According to Jim Ehrets, a Denver-based geologist with Headington Oil Co., of Dallas, it costs about $5 million (euro3.15 million) to drill a well tapping the middle Bakken, and companies need crude prices of at least $50 a barrel to make it economical. Even with crude prices now double that, "there still is a ton of risk,'' he said.
Oil companies began sharing technology about two years ago on how to recover the oil. The technology involves drilling vertically to about 10,000 feet (3,048 meters), then "kicking out'' for as many feet horizontally, while fracturing the rock to release the oil trapped in microscopic pores in the area known as the "middle'' Bakken.
Initially, companies had kept their technology secret, said Ehrets.
"Everybody was protecting their results while the lease play was still going on,'' he said. "Once it had been pretty well saturated and not much left to lease, there was cooperation in sharing information.
"I can't remember in my entire career that kind of cooperation,'' said Ehrets, an oil man for nearly 30 years.
Headington, which is based in Dallas, has about 150 wells working in the Bakken - about 100 of them in Montana - with plans to drill at least 100 more, Ehrets said.
The Geological Survey said about 105 million barrels of oil have been produced from the Bakken through last year. The Elm Coulee oil field in eastern Montana, near the North Dakota border, has produced about 65 million barrels of the total, said Rich Pollastro, a USGS geologist.
The Elm Coulee field was discovered in 2000, he said.
The study released Thursday by USGS does not estimate how much oil may be in the Bakken - only what the agency believes can be recovered using current technology.
Thursday's report did not cover the Canadian portion of the Bakken. Pollastro said a 2000 assessment found only about 15 million barrels of recoverable oil in that area using traditional vertical drilling.
Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said the number of wells in the Bakken in North Dakota increased from about 300 in 2006 to 457 at the end of last year.-AP
thread & http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3021/pdf/FS08-3021_508.pdf
How many times are we going to hear this story before they start pumping/converting oil?
The story has whiskers.
How did this manage to slip by the greens? There are actually producing wells and they are digging more.
The way our country is right now, we could have oil shooting up from the ground in geysers and we still wouldn’t be allowed to use it.
Don’t let the Dems find out. They’ll turn half the state into a wildlife refuge just as they did with Alaska, Utah, and Montana.
Enjoy!
;>)
Well, then this should be headlines. There’s our self reliant energy solution. Problem solved. Next?
Looks like you got your ‘billions’ & ‘millions’ kind of slanchwise. I only mention it, because (IMHO) the D@mocrats do it on purpose...
If the democrats have their way, the “deniers” will have tape over their nose and mouth to prevent CO2 environmental destruction.
Tell me something Guys...
If we pump like crazy in the US, doesn’t that oil go onto the “world market”? Just because we pump it doesn’t mean it’s sold here, right?
And if that’s how it works and if the volume was high enough to impact the world’s supply, that should drive prices down, right?
Still, I’d like to see it stay here.
Nothing to see here, let's just move on, etc., etc...
I was reporting what the link to the North Dakota site said: there were provable amounts in the hundreds of millions of barrels and possible reserves of 1.6 billion barrels. This later report increases it form 1.6 to 4.3 billion barrels. So, 4.3 thousand million barrels is a pretty good amount.
The article said that 105 million barrels had already been pumped.
He’s gone to bed but Smokin’ Joe, who works part of the Bakken play, thinks that the Gubmint is seriously low balling this estimate. You would want to be careful, something this potentially huge could cause real disruption. If the price dropped too far too fast, for example, the incentive to explore and exploit this would go away and we’d be back on the ME teat like we are now.
There are such things as transportation costs. Barring government interference ('Oh, What a Wonderful World!'), petroleum products would be sold (and used) as close as possible to the place where they were produced.
Don't forget your 'common sense'...
Hermaphrodite Frogs Found in Suburban Ponds
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
This is disappointing, it was originally being stated there were 400 billion barrels. 4.5 billion sounds like a lot, but it only represents a 215 day supply for the US...we use 20 million barrels a day....nice to have, every little bit helps, but this is a little bit.
Sounds good to me!
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