Capex Budgets a Key Topic in Wall Street Transcript Oil & Gas Exploration & Production Report
The Wall Street Transcript has just published its Oil & Gas Exploration & Production issue, a report offering a timely review of the sector to serious investors and industry executives. This 72-page feature contains a roundtable forum and industry commentary through in depth interviews with CEOs from 10 firms and 2 analysts. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.
Topics covered: Outlook for oil and gas prices, Possible gas oversupply situation, Nonconventional natural gas plays, Decline in Canadian gas production, Rig count and drilling companies, New oil drilling projects, Impact of inflation, Outlook for LNG imports, Possibility of future gas self-sufficiency in North America, Reserve to production ratio, Capital expenditures and free cash flow, Offshore drilling, M&A activity, Investor interest, Stock recommendations, Energy downside risks, Stock Picks, Stocks to Avoid.
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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
Assessment of Undiscovered Oil Resources in the Devonian-Mississippian Bakken Formation, Williston Basin Province, Montana and North Dakota, 2008
Abstract
Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated mean undiscovered volumes of 3.65 billion barrels of oil, 1.85 trillion cubic feet of associated/dissolved natural gas, and 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids in the Bakken Formation of the Williston Basin Province, Montana and North Dakota.
Introduction
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed an assessment of the undiscovered oil and associated gas resources of the Upper Devonian–Lower Mississippian Bakken Formation in the U.S. portion of the Williston Basin of Montana and North Dakota and within the Williston Basin Province (Figure 1). The assessment is based on geologic elements of a total petroleum system (TPS) that include: (1) source-rock distribution, thickness, organic richness, maturation, petroleum generation, and migration; (2) reservoir-rock type (conventional or continuous), distribution, and quality; and (3) character of traps and time of formation with respect to petroleum generation and migration. Detailed framework studies in stratigraphy and structural geology and the modeling of petroleum geochemistry, combined with historical exploration and production analyses, were used to aid in the estimation of the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and associated gas resources of the Bakken Formation in the United States. Using this framework, the USGS defined a Bakken-Lodgepole TPS and seven assessment units (AU) within the TPS. For the Bakken Formation, the undiscovered oil and associated gas resources within six of these assessment units were quantitatively estimated A conventional AU within the Lodgepole Formation was not assessed.. Read more
