Released: 4/10/2008 2:25:36 PM
Contact Information:
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
Office of Communication
119 National Center
Reston, VA 20192
- Read FAQs about the Bakken Formation.
- Listen to a podcast with the lead scientist on this topic.
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.
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.
Results of the assessment can be found at http://energy.usgs.gov.
For a podcast interview with scientists about the Bakken Formation, listen to episode 38 of CoreCast at http://www.usgs.gov/corecast/.
Just a question, why are we not drilling here instead of sending money to countries that don’t really like us very much? Now onto some more assinine, environmental, political restrictions.
A few excerpts. For the entire article click here.
WASHINGTON, May 8 — In 1977, the United States and Cuba signed a treaty that evenly divided the Florida Straits to preserve each country’s economic rights. They included access to vast underwater oil and gas fields on both sides of the line.
Now, with energy costs soaring, plans are under way to drill this year — but all on the Cuban side.
“This is the irony of ironies,” Charles T. Drevna, executive vice president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, said of Cuba’s collaboration with China and India. “We have chosen to lock up our resources and stand by to be spectators while these two come in and benefit from things right in our own backyard.”
At a recent trade conference in Mexico City arranged by Mr. Jones, Cuban officials invited American oil companies to bid for the other leases on the Cuban side of the Florida Straits even though drilling in Cuban waters would violate the United States’ longstanding trade embargo against Cuba.
Any politician that opposes domestic offshore and/or onshore drilling should be voted out of office. This is completely assanine as are the restrictions on drilling in Anwar and other regions within the continental Unites States. Rules and regulations must be tempered with a little common sense. Unfortunately there is a toll booth set up for politicians and bureaucrats that enter Washington and state capitals. The toll is common sense and so they enter office without any.
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