[thackney]

Bakken was capable of generating 10 billion barrels of oil.

I read "capable of generating" to mean a production quantity.

Nor do I see the value of estimates prior to 3D seismology, horizontal steerable drilling, etc to have much meaning in comparisons to today's estimates.

Leigh Price was the one that did the real work with sufficient data in the late 90s. There have been other real estimates since then, notably Meissner & Banks; Flannery & Kraus as well as Bohrer. All of those estimates are lower, not greater, values for total oil in place of the Bakken.

[tatown]

Yeah I think the language the author chose to use was not very precise and please note that I’m not trying to argue with you, I am referencing this article simply to show how the total hydrocarbon number (both total and recoverable) keeps going up.

1974: 10 billion bbls

1982: 92 billion bbls

1983: 132 billion bbls

1999: 270-500 billion bbls

Here is another article that articulates it even better:

http://www.undeerc.org/bakken/oilproduction.aspx