By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
Hat Tip: Nancy Jacques
Very little has been written about the Bakken Formation and the rich oil reservoir just beneath it in western North Dakota. This recently discovered oil depository potentially holds 1.9 billion barrels in the Three Forks-Sanish formation.
For years, the oil industry have known about this oil field, but it was too costly to explore and the technology was not yet available. That is all changing now. The question is whether the EPA, environmentalists and our oppressive government will allow the exploration and harvesting of this tremendous resource that would greatly aid the US in their need for cheap, accessible energy and loosen our ties to the Middle East and other nations who hold us in a virtual energy stranglehold.
From the StarTribune on the Devonian-Mississippian Bakken Formation:
Geologists and oil companies have mixed opinions whether the Three Forks is a separate oil-producing formation or if it acts as a trap, catching oil that leaks from the Bakken shale above. Some have said it could be a combination of both.
The Bakken formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota.
Two years ago, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil could be recovered from the Bakken in North Dakota and Montana, using current technology. The agency called it the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed. The federal report found up to 2.6 billion barrels of Bakken crude could be recovered in North Dakota, compared with the state’s estimate of 2.1 billion barrels.
Billionaire oilman Harold Hamm believes the state and federal estimates of recoverable oil in the Bakken and Three Forks are conservative.
“I made a statement two years ago I thought the play (Bakken and Three Forks) has 8 billion barrels of oil,” said Hamm, chairman and chief executive officer of Continental Resources Inc., an independent oil and gas company based in Enid, Okla.
But our Department of Energy is throwing cold water on the find in typical fashion:
But Steve Grape, the domestic reserves project manager for the U.S. Department of Energy’s information administration, said the state’s Three Forks findings would not boost the country’s 19 billion barrels of proven oil reserves at present.
He said there is a distinction between proven reserves and oil that can be technically recoverable, the latter he called “pie-in-the-sky estimates.”
“Three Forks has a lot of promise,” he said. “But it does not add to our proven reserves because it has not been proved yet.”
So the government will stall on this like they have done on all drilling efforts to appease the left-wing kook environmentalists in their ranks, while Americans run out of energy, pay massively rising energy costs and keep plummeting down the Depression-hole. I don’t know why we would expect anything different at this point. Certainly not fiscal and national sanity.
A very special thanks to Nancy Jacques for the tip…
Other news resources on this topic can be found here:
National Assessment of Oil and Gas Fact Sheet
Update: Here is a comment that may have merit – he looks at the big picture (which I have not looked into):
From: Denver
Forgive me as I am no petroleum expert. The CIA fact book says the US uses 12.5 million barrels of oil per day. The largest estimate above, 4.3 billion, represents about one year’s worth of petroleum.
I’m not saying don’t drill, I’m a real “drill here, drill now kinda guy, but we need about 30 oil fields of this size if we don’t want to sit in the dark and freeze in the not too distant future.
Good day.
I will add though, that one year’s worth of oil is a good starting point and is survival oriented… Drill here, drill now – drill wherever we can…
Agreed — the quoted reserves, if accurate, would make Bakken a pretty chump-change prospect, with less than half the recoverable reserves at ANWR, which ain’t much.
At some point, with luck, you might pull 1 million barrels/day out of Bakken, which is nice but won’t have much impact on energy prices or national security, especially since the other American fields are mostly in decline.
It’s actually been discussed extensively on the Web, by folks who don’t know how to read the numbers. It’s not a big deal in the MSM (or in the minds of the Oil Majors) because it’s not a big deal, period.
Forgive me as I am no petroleum expert. The CIA fact book says the US uses 12.5 million barrels of oil per day. The largest estimate above, 4.3 billion, represents about one year’s worth of petroleum.
I’m not saying don’t drill, I’m a real “drill here, drill now kinda guy, but we need about 30 oil fields of this size if we don’t want to sit in the dark and freeze in the not too distant future.
Good day.