North Dakota’s Bakken Oil Play
Mountrail County is a rolling grassland of nearly 2000 square miles in northwestern North Dakota. The county’s economy has long been based on agriculture. It is a land of farms and ranches together with small towns providing services to the rural population.
In 2007 the county found itself in the heart of the state’s oil development, thanks to the Bakken Formation.
The Bakken (BAH-ken) is a vast, deep formation of permeable rock rich in both natural gas and quality crude oil. The Bakken is also being tapped in Montana and Saskatchewan. Read more
Canada Stocks Decline on Oil, Led by Canadian Natural, EnCana
Canadian stocks fell a second day, led by energy companies, after Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. lowered its production forecast and crude oil prices slid to a 19-month low.
Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. and EnCana Corp., the nation’s biggest natural gas producer, fell with grain and oil prices in Toronto, while Pason Systems Inc. climbed after declaring a semiannual dividend.
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Bakken Shale Oil Formation – Largest Oil Pool Found – Parshall Field in Bakken Shale
The Bakken Shale Oil field, which stretches down from Canada into North Dakota and Montana, could hold 3.65 billion barrels in oil reserves which would be the largest finding in U.S history next to the Oil fields in Alaska. This oil shale formation is located in the Williston Basin according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Bakken formation is a rich deposit that the U.S. Geological Survey calls the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.
The year 1995 was the last time the USGS surveyed the Bakken area in which they found roughly 151 million barrels of recoverable oil. Since then, there have been many technological advances causing the big spike to 3.65 billion barrels. The biggest oil field, which is located at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska ( ANWAR ), could potentially hold up to 10 billion barrels of oil. Read more
The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable… at $107 a barrel, we’re looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.
* “When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.” says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature’s financial analyst.
* “This sizeable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years,” reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
It’s a formation known as the Williston Basin, but is more commonly referred to as the “Bakken.” And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada. For years, U.S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the “Big Oil” companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken’s massive reserves… and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL! That’s enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight. To America, this discovery couldn’t have come at a better time. You see, when all the wells are finally drilled and pumping, we won’t have to import any foreign oil from the Middle East. Not a single drop! Read more
The Bakken Oil Field The Oil Find That Trumps Saudi’s Biggest Oil Field
Comfortable with $100+ oil prices, OPEC oil exporters refused to increase output, a move that quickly sent oil above $108 a barrel.
“At the moment there is enough oil in the market and no need to change OPEC’s output,” said OPEC general secretary Abdullah al-Badri, opting to blame the “US economic recession, lack of refining capacity and depreciation of the dollar’s value” for higher oil prices.
While true, what if the U.S. could tell OPEC oil exports where they could stick their oil? What if we could significantly reduce our dependency on foreign oil, and sit back as the Middle East lost billions in oil revenue?
Well… if all goes according to plan, we may be able to do just that.
The Next Oil Boom Is Upon Us… in the Bakken Oil Field
U.S. consumers paid out $340 billion to import 14 million barrels a day… just for 2007. And it’s only likely to get worse. We’re already paying more $3.30 for a gallon of gas on gushing pre-summer driving season oil prices. Read more
Bakken Formation: Will it fuel Canada’s oil industry?
It’s common knowledge that there is a lot of oil in the Western part of North America, but it’s difficult and expensive to get out of the ground. What may surprise some, though, is that much of that oil is under regions that aren’t known as major oil producers —Saskatchewan, Manitoba, North Dakota and Montana.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), there may be as many as 503 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken Formation – a natural geological phenomenon in the region – and estimates say that anywhere from three to 50 per cent of it is recoverable by currently available technology.
The Bakken Formation is a 350 million-year-old underground layer of rock that occurs in much of the Williston Basin, a vaguely heart-shaped warp in the otherwise flat prairies on the U.S.-Canada border. It was discovered in 1953 by a geologist named J.W. Nordquist and named after Henry Bakken, owner of the Montana farm where Nordquist first drilled.
While it was postulated as early as 1974 that the Bakken could contain vast amounts of petroleum, it wasn’t until Denver-based geologist Leigh Price undertook a field assessment for the USGS in 1995 that anybody tried to find out how much was actually there. Read more
