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Title: to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate—
Source:
USGS
URL Source: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911
Published: Apr 10, 2008
Author: USGS
Post Date: 2009-07-14 14:54:09 by X-15
Keywords: None
Views: 136
Comments: 3
Reston, VA - North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation. A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil. Related Podcasts 3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Oil in North Dakota and Montana Download directly | Details or subscribe by e-mail. Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources. New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger technically recoverable oil volumes. About 105 million barrels of oil were produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007. The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000. The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A "continuous" oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest "continuous" oil accumulation in the U.S. is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1.0 billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil. "It is clear that the Bakken formation contains a significant amount of oil - the question is how much of that oil is recoverable using today's technology?" said Senator Byron Dorgan, of North Dakota. "To get an answer to this important question, I requested that the U.S. Geological Survey complete this study, which will provide an up-to-date estimate on the amount of technically recoverable oil resources in the Bakken Shale formation." The USGS estimate of 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil has a mean value of 3.65 billion barrels. Scientists conducted detailed studies in stratigraphy and structural geology and the modeling of petroleum geochemistry. They also combined their findings with historical exploration and production analyses to determine the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil estimates. USGS worked with the North Dakota Geological Survey, a number of petroleum industry companies and independents, universities and other experts to develop a geological understanding of the Bakken Formation. These groups provided critical information and feedback on geological and engineering concepts important to building the geologic and production models used in the assessment. Five continuous assessment units (AU) were identified and assessed in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana - the Elm Coulee-Billings Nose AU, the Central Basin-Poplar Dome AU, the Nesson-Little Knife Structural AU, the Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and the Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU. At the time of the assessment, a limited number of wells have produced oil from three of the assessments units in Central Basin-Poplar Dome, Eastern Expulsion Threshold, and Northwest Expulsion Threshold. The Elm Coulee oil field in Montana, discovered in 2000, has produced about 65 million barrels of the 105 million barrels of oil recovered from the Bakken Formation.
Poster Comment: Do you think Obama will say anything??
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#1. To: X-15 (#0)
Somebody get me a straw.
I read that about the oil in ND, the gubmint will find some way to shut that down.
I.e. it's recoverable within a given price range. The Bakken, and what appears to be a similar new, and equally huge deposit, to the east, contain oil that is essentially "impossible" to extract if oil is trading on the world market for less than say, 50 or 60 dollars a barrel. If oil sustained $100+ dollars a barrel these formations would probably show periodic doublings of these figures. If oil went to stratospheric levels or the US was isolated from foreign purchase abruptly, the oil would be recovered from these formations even if we had to shaft down to the formations and longwall them with mining equipment wearing spacesuits. Obviously this wouldn't last long because at $250+ per barrel of oil people are going to be cooking and catylizing hydrocarbons from anything organic (mainly wastes). The key to understanding "oil" is that it is in no way scarce, when thinking of that, actually think "It's scarce at $XX.XX/barrel". What everybody is fretting over these days is really the dissappearance of sub $30-$40/barrel oil coupled with certain nations who've become addicted to that level screwing up their financial system to the point that people with it in a cheaply extractable form aren't going to be willing to part with it for their method of payment. Oil above about $100-$125 for any length of time quickly creates it's own pricing demise (at this point mainly from economic stagnation coupled with cheap producers flooding the market to keep alternative sources off line). Any sustained price above this range is going to spawn a host of alternative hydrocarbon generation technologies along with creating booms in every region with expensive to extract (i.e. Bakken, sands/shales, continental shelf hydrides, ultra deep water) sources. The current Bakken boom is due exactly to this, I believe now drilling has dropped off significantly and I'd bet that any wells/fields which have recouped their capitalization get shut off when the price falls below $60-$70/barrel...
Bring on the Depression. Bring it the F*** ON! If digging ditches and eating beans for a few years is what it takes for me to see some worthless sacks of crap bankers and politicians living in sack cloth and being spat upon by my fellow Americans well... where's my shovel?!?!
There's no place better thanTurtle Island.
#2. To: Turtle (#1)
#3. To: X-15 (#0)
Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices.
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