What is America waiting for? McCain should jump on this now as a campaign promise

[MrLabGuy]

America is sitting on top of a super massive 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.

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

Bakken crude needs little refining. Swirl some of it in a Mason jar and it leaves a thin, honey-colored film along the sides. It's light -- almost like gasoline -- and sweet, meaning it's low in sulfur. Best of all, the Bakken could be huge. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimated in 2000 that the Bakken might hold 413 billion barrels. If so, it would dwarf Saudi Arabia's Ghawar, the world's biggest field, which has produced about 55 billion barrels.

[motordavid]

LabGuy,
Dunno where you get some of the stuff you toss up here...
A lil' GOOG'ng/Snopes shows a plethora of less than sanquine views
on the Bakken "field"...I won't bother to paste the long arts.
by petro/geologists, but the gist seems to be there is about
a year's worth of US consumption, max, and less than that
is recoverable with current methods and widly expensive for
the effort.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3868

[rayxi]

The shale is tight. Microdarcy permeability at best. That's like sucking a milkshake through a brick. Sure there's a lot of oil there but the flow rates are prohibitive for exploitation. That's like me giving you a million dollars but at one cent per day - you wouldn't be feeling very rich would you?

[MrLabGuy]

Originally Posted by motordavid

LabGuy,
Dunno where you get some of the stuff you toss up here...
A lil' GOOG'ng/Snopes shows a plethora of less than sanquine views
on the Bakken "field"...I won't bother to paste the long arts.
by petro/geologists, but the gist seems to be there is about
a year's worth of US consumption, max, and less than that
is recoverable with current methods and widly expensive for
the effort.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3868

This is new reports which just surfaced in the news this week. I'll find the article.

The process of injecting water and sand loosens up the substrata and makes oil recovery possible.

[MrLabGuy]

Here is an article released 20 minutes ago.

http://www.theenergynews.com/news/ar...=energyrelease

MEDICINE HAT, AB, June 6 /CNW/ - Reece Energy Exploration Corp. (TSX-V/RXR) ("Reece") is pleased to announce that its first exploratory Bakken well has been successfully tested for oil. As previously announced, the well (50% net to Reece) penetrated the Bakken formation for the full lateral section, extending approximately 1,400 meters horizontally. Oil was detected in the majority of the samples and "oil over the shaker" was observed during drilling. The well has been tested over the past six days with satisfactory oil recovery without fracture treatment. Reece and its partner will evaluate the well in the coming weeks. "We are very pleased to have resource success in the first of our three exploratory Bakken areas. This success will help to prove up the 6,000 gross acres of Joint venture lands in the immediate area and bolsters our optimism for the our other two Bakken project areas," said Lorne Swalm the President and CEO of Reece. As of today's date, the drilling rig is moving to the Company's second Bakken location to commence drilling in the second of the three larger land blocks acquired by Reece and its joint venture partner in the area.

[MrLabGuy]

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=16608

From Google June 2nd story
GETTING OIL FROM A STONE

Exxon Mobil's CEO Rex Tillerson says his energy company's "corporate social responsibility" is to produce more energy. While Congress wants to tax oil profits, he wants to spend them to find more oil.
Investor's Business Daily (IBD) says it is irresponsible to ignore the growing energy requirements of the U.S. and world economy, hoping they will be met solely by sources such as biofuels which actually harm the environment by leading to cutting down forests and disturbing the soil to plant crops destined for our gas tanks, releasing huge amounts of CO2 in the process. Instead, the United States should focus on developing its existing oil deposits, currently trapped in oil sands and shale rock. There are many such locations:

• Exxon is spending $8 billion of its profits on the Kearl oil sands project in Alberta, Canada, an area with an estimated 173 million barrels of crude oil; this project alone is aimed at recovering between 4.5 and 6.5 billion barrels of oil.
• Oil is also trapped in the shale in the Bakken Formation, straddling western North Dakota and Montana; the Bakken Formation holds an estimated 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil, according to Leigh Price, a scientist with the U.S. geological survey.
• A Rand Corporation study says the Green River Formation, which covers parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude; of that, some 800 billion barrels are recoverable with current technology -- roughly triple Saudi Arabia's current known reserves.
• According to the Institute for Energy Research, the United States has 2 trillion barrels of oil shale; this is more than 7 times the amount of crude oil reserves found in Saudi Arabia, and is enough to meet current U.S. demand for over 250 years.

If full-scale production begins within five years, the United States could completely end its dependence on OPEC by 2020, says Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation. That's quite a forecast, given that nearly a half of our oil today comes from that monopoly. In fact, there is enough North American petroleum trapped in oil sands and shale rock to form our own OPEC, says IBD.
Source: "Getting Oil From A Stone," Investor's Business Daily, May 30, 2008.

[motordavid]

"The Bakken potential resource, while large by US onshore field standards, will have only a minor effect on US production or imports. Using 2006 US imports and consumption for comparison, the Bakken undiscovered resource of 3,649 million barrels of oil, if subsequently discovered and fully developed, would provide us with the equivalent of six months of oil consumption or 10 months of imports, spread over 20 or more years. In reality, the reserves developed are likely to be many times smaller than this value."


I don't wanna arm wrestle this...but it's he said/they said depending
upon who's doing the guessing and interpolating. But, these "potential
reserve" numbers all tend to be similar to there are a trillion fish in
the ocean...but no one is going to catch even a % of them.

And, what the hell does McCain have to do with any of this? He's
running for Prez, not King.

[MrLabGuy]

Sure 3,649 million barrels of oil would not be worth the time or effort it would take to tap this resource.

The article you quoted was very pessimistic and focused on what has been done and produced so far in the region. Fact is we have not even begun to invest in the infrastructure necessary to extract such a field which is why the production has been so low. Prior to this year oil prices were cheap and we decided as a policy to import the product which was considerably cheaper and easier than developing the Bakken site.

Look where that thinking has us now. I say turn loose our great minds and work out a way to get this moving which is now starting to take place with the recent price of oil.

[AzX5]

Meanwhile, Brazil is drilling off their coast and finding huge reserves of oil that makes them beyond completely energy independant:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...e4013564.shtml

While here at home, we can thank the liberals/democrats for the following:

"It’s currently illegal to explore the Atlantic. It is illegal to explore the Pacific. It is illegal to explore the Eastern Gulf Of Mexico. It is illegal to explore Alaska and it is currently illegal to look for shale oil. Now, if you basically…and this is what makes the recent decision by the House to vote to sue OPEC an act of absolute childishness. If you’re not prepared to allow Americans in America to look for oil and gas in America, how can you have the arrogance to say to some foreign country they have to pump more of the stuff we’re not willing to pump?" --Newt Gingrich

[AzX5]

Oh yeah, sign the petition to DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW!:

http://www.americansolutions.com/