Massive Oil Deposit Could Increase US reserves by 10x

[Darkhole]

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at $20-$40 a barrel.

It was not until 2007, when EOG Resources of Texas started a frenzy when they drilled a single well in Parshal N.D. that is expected to yield 700,000 barrels of oil that real excitement and money started to flow in North Dakota. Marathon Oil is investing $1.5 billion and drilling 300 new wells in what is expected to be one of the greatest booms in Oil discovery since Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938.

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.

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news2.13s.html

[Dymanic]

Saturn's moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, but we aren't calling it a "reserve", because we can't exploit it. Extracting the Bakken oil has not previously been economically feasible due to the nature of the shale formation and the presence of iron pyrite, so it hasn't been considered a recoverable resource even though the industry has been aware of it for more than fifty years. As oil prices skyrocket in the face of an impending decline in global oil production, more intensive extraction methods become profitable, and you can add sources like Bakken to what you're counting as "proven reserves". What ultimately counts, however, isn't just how much oil is there; it's how fast you can extract it. At current rates of consumption, the entire region would be doing good to produce as much oil in a year as the US consumes in a day, no matter how hard you flog the ground.

Sorry to pop your bubble, but "stabilizing the US trade deficit and cutting the cost of oil in half " isn't EVEN on the table. I mean, think about it. If high prices are what's making it worth the extra effort to produce oil from problematic sources, what happens when those efforts are so successful that they drive the price back down?

[kallsop]

I mean, think about it. If high prices are what's making it worth the extra effort to produce oil from problematic sources, what happens when those efforts are so successful that they drive the price back down?


That's the same argument the alternative fuelers fail to grasp. If you can reduce the demand for oil, the price of oil will drop, and the alternative fuel becomes price uncompetitive. There is enough oil to go around and the current speculation driven bubble will burst sooner or later. That's why alternative fuels are not going to happen any time soon, unless they have the bottomless backing of taxpayers e.g. ethanol.

[Darkhole]

Saturn's moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, but we aren't calling it a "reserve", because we can't exploit it. Extracting the Bakken oil has not previously been economically feasible due to the nature of the shale formation and the presence of iron pyrite, so it hasn't been considered a recoverable resource even though the industry has been aware of it for more than fifty years. As oil prices skyrocket in the face of an impending decline in global oil production, more intensive extraction methods become profitable, and you can add sources like Bakken to what you're counting as "proven reserves". What ultimately counts, however, isn't just how much oil is there; it's how fast you can extract it. At current rates of consumption, the entire region would be doing good to produce as much oil in a year as the US consumes in a day, no matter how hard you flog the ground.

Sorry to pop your bubble, but "stabilizing the US trade deficit and cutting the cost of oil in half " isn't EVEN on the table. I mean, think about it. If high prices are what's making it worth the extra effort to produce oil from problematic sources, what happens when those efforts are so successful that they drive the price back down?


Not my bubble.;)

I was looking for exacle the post you posted, a sceptical answer.

[Dymanic]

Not my bubble.
Dang. I guess that leaves the rest of my weekend free then.

[Magyar]

as if oil prices had ANYTHING to do with actual availability and or demand.

[Corsair 115]

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...I'm curious, how was that dollar figure calcluated?

I'll note that in the first eleven months of 2007, Canada was the leading supplier of crude oil to the United States, accounting for 18.65% of U.S. imports. Mexico was third, just slightly behind Saudi Arabia, and accounted for 14.21% of imports. That means America's two neighbouring countries and NAFTA partners supplied almost one-third of its crude oil imports (32.86% to be precise).

[rjh01]

I think you are making a few incorrect assumptions here.
1. This news report is correct. Can we get the news from other sources? How reliable is Next energy news?
2. The cost of extracting the oil will be large, so they will not start drilling until the price is guaranteed to stay high. This means that the price will not go down, it will just not go up.
3. There is the oil down there where they believe it to be. They can only tell that when they start extracting the oil.

[Dymanic]

Can we get the news from other sources?
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ftproot/features/ngshock.pdf

How reliable is Next energy news?The numbers presented in the above-linked article appear reasonably accurate. The conclusions reached by the author I would characterize as: ravings of the utterly clueless.

We live in interesting times. The impending global oil shortage represents a challenge as great as any ever previously faced by any human society. We're about to take a tumble from a very high cliff, and I think we'll be lucky if we manage to "innovate" our way into any kind of a soft landing. Thomas Frank seems to think we're going to sprout wings and fly off into the sunset:

"Soon Energy Dependence will give way to Energy Abundance. No Government, Corporation or Cartel will be able to stifle the Revolution in Energy Technologies that are now breaking through to the surface, and Next Energy News will be here to chronicle this transformation and highlight the companies and individuals that will make it all happen."
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-about.html

Personal experience makes it difficult for me to stay Objective when I see Capital Letters used in that Particular Way, and the implicit conspiratorial assumptions are also hard to ignore. I absolutely do agree, however, that we need to be focusing intently on alternative sources of energy. If that sort of jumping up and down is what it takes to get the innovators innovating, then I suppose there are greater evils in the world. There is an interesting compilation of articles there on developments in both conventional and alternative energies, but seeing Frank's take on the Bakken Oil Formation underscores the importance of ignoring comments made by "reporters" and going straight to the sources.

[RecoveringYuppy]

Stark reality: Even if we found 200 billion barrels of conventional oil it would only make us energy independent for a decade or two at most. And that's with a lot of unreasonably optimistic assumptions.

(Putting aside that this article sounds like total lunacy).

[Hindmost]

Oil shale reserves are very plentiful...however difficult to extract. This is not new or even unique. There's a bunch more out in the US west.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_reserves

It takes about a ton of shale to make a barrel of oil. Depending on the formation, much of this oil isn't recoverable.

glenn

[a_unique_person]

Oil shale reserves are very plentiful...however difficult to extract. This is not new or even unique. There's a bunch more out in the US west.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_reserves

It takes about a ton of shale to make a barrel of oil. Depending on the formation, much of this oil isn't recoverable.

glenn

Is the article about oil shale? He didn't mention that. It's even harder to get oil out of than sand, IIRC. Australia has plenty of oil shale as well, and no-ones talking about getting that out of the ground yet.

[Dymanic]

Is the article about oil shale?
Not exactly. The formation is basically a sandwich of dolomite between layers of shale, and the whole business is shot through with fractures, and the fractures are full of wet oil. You can drill down vertically until the bore intersects with one of these fractures, but as the shale swells upon exposure to the drilling fluid (water), it tends to seal off the fracture system. Because of this, conventional drilling methods focusing on the upper shale layer have met with very limited success. Application of hydraulic fracturing techniques to horizontal wellbores has recently made extraction from the middle dolomite layer appear more viable, but it's still a pretty tricky affair.

All we're really seeing here is a redefining of "recoverable" to reflect these improvements in technology, driven by an increase in the price of oil. As the price continues to increase, it will be redefined further. Eventually, you reach a point where it no longer matters how high the price is; if you're extracting oil for use as an energy source, then when the extracting and refining processes begin to take more energy than what can be gotten out of the finished product, then whatever's left in the ground might as well be on Titan.

[Hindmost]

Is the article about oil shale? He didn't mention that. It's even harder to get oil out of than sand, IIRC. Australia has plenty of oil shale as well, and no-ones talking about getting that out of the ground yet.

Dymanic answered this obviously. Being able to steer drillbits has been a big advancement in oil recovery....pretty nifty if you ask me.

glenn

I am hoping we will be able to microwave the oil out of shale soon....but nuclear weapons might be needed.

[shadron]

Nukes - that's old hat. They tried that with the Rulison blast in Colorado oil shales, and wound up with lots of radioactive oil. Great fracing technique, if you stand way back.