200billion barrel oil field discovered inside United States

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America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel 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.

The US imported about 14 million barrels of Oil per day in 2007 , which means US consumers sent about $340 Billion Dollars over seas building palaces in Dubai and propping up unfriendly regimes around the World, if 200 billion barrels of oil at $90 a barrel are recovered in the high plains the added wealth to the US economy would be $18 Trillion Dollars which would go a long way in stabilizing the US trade deficit and could cut the cost of oil in half in the long run.

QUESTION:

If the United States stopped sending $340bn to Arab nations, what effect would that have on those nations, and the subsequent stability of Middle Eastern oil supplies?

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I’m sure the Democrats and Globalists are rushing to lock this down and make it inaccessible.

Thought this might be an April Fool’s item but no, the report is actually from earlier. For a slightly better writeup (including a bit of skepticism) I suggest this. Looks quite exciting if it pans out, though!

It may do little. An idea could be to take the loss now, so one could be the supplier later. Most of our oil actually comes from Canada though. The big problem the U.S. has is the lack of gasoline refineries. Montana is already trying to get an infrastructure system to turn coal into gasoline which would be cheaper now than using oil. Montana holds 1/3 of the U.S. coal supply.

I am sure that the Democrats, who locked up our entire stock of clean low sulphur coal so we could buy it from Indonesia’s Riati, they will find a way to stop the exploitation of mother Earth in it’s tracks. Today looks like bash big oil day, so maybe tomorrow they will get started on this.

Burning food is turning out to be a very bad idea … Gaia would be proud, though.

Those of you who never knew Democrat President Jimmy Carter and the damage to America he did with his Democrat Congress, you are going to get a second chance.

Will this matter if we don’t have the capacity to refine it?

Start drilling in ANWAR Now.
Start drilling this new field Now.
Start building refineries Now.
Get rid of the middle grade of refined gasoline that almost nobody uses.

These things would very quickly have positive results on gas prices, inflation, and more.

A government source on the question: http://www.nd.gov/ndic/ic-press/bakken-form-06.pdf

The key point would seem to be whether a substantial portion of the oil is recoverable. The upcoming USGS report (mentioned in the original link above) is apparently the “Price report” discussed in the link I provided. Price estimates that 50% of the Bakken oil is recoverable, but that figure is controversial; it is far higher than any previous estimate, and those previous estimates have been as low as single-digit percentages.

If we’ve improved our recovery technology to the point that 50% of Bakken can be recovered, that’s great news. I’m not holding my breath on a single research paper, though…

“Get rid of the middle grade of refined gasoline that almost nobody uses.”

The best tip I’ve seen yet 🙂

(of course we need to drill and build refineries, but a little clean up wouldn’t hurt the pumps)

The taxes taken from a gallon of gas are higher than the profit margin on a gallon of gas. The ones making all the money off a gallon of gas or diesel is the government. If they really cared about us, they’d cut back the .47 cents per gallon average that they pinch off the top.

But it’s easier for squishy heads to blame the oil companies.

Re: “The taxes taken from a gallon of gas are higher than the profit margin on a gallon of gas. ”

That is interesting, but irrevelant to the fact that the price has increased so dramatically and howit is helping to tank the US economy. (Please note, this comment is NOT assigning “blame”, one way or the other: Just noting that the ratio is not important here.

“The US imported 14 million barrels of oil/day in 2007”, most of which came from Canada, Mexico, and Norway, with Trinidad and Equatorial Guinea thrown in. Less than 20% came from the Mideast. So we haven’t been building palaces in Dubai; that’s the work of the Euros, the Japanese and the Chinese. The Mideast countries (esp. Saudi and Iran) have outsized influence because they have the lowest production cost and the largest reserve production capacity, hence they make the market.

“Getting rid of the middle grade of refined gasoline”? Shows how much you know. Gas comes in Regular and Premium. Mid-grade is blended from these 2 grades, right there at the gas pump. So getting rid of it would just mildly annoy the people like me who actually use it but would yield zero energy of dollar savings.

News Flash: “Endangered Southern Caribou Discovered in North Dakota”

Even without this find, there is enough oil in the U.S. which can be recovered without any danger to the environment to fuel this country as we transition to an alternative energy economy. We could quickly shut off all imports except from Canada.

We really should start to drill that Northern Alaska oil before it gets much colder up there are we can’t get it. Better to get at it when we are experiencing warmer climate up there than try when it is under ice and slow all year round.

Or we could get off oil completely (unless you don’t think America’s exceptionalism extends to being intelligent and innovative), and kill 2 birds with one stone.

Robert: We could do that in 20 years and have the development and implementation of a hydrogen energy economy paid for with the taxes and royalties from exploiting ALL current U.S. petroleum reserves.

Or… we could just continue to TALK about energy indepedence and do nothing but continue to funnel trillions to the Arabs and Chavez.

Sounds great to me. Tell it to the dems. That was the whole point of Cheney’s energy plan-to use what oil we have and search for new sources of energy. Austin Powers fans just see Dr Evil and a secret White House pool packed with sharks that have friggin “lay-zers” on their heads.

Me, I see killer mutant sea bass in a bath tub, but hey…some people like conspiracies, see bungling

Scott,
Tell me about it on conspiracies. Some people thought Saddam Hussein was going to use non-existent WMDs to bomb the U.S., while others thought Muslims would take over the country and make us all wear burqas.
CRAZIES, huh?

Well, anyway it sounds like even a POS like Cheney agrees with me and Mike’s America.

Well Robert, we do have the audio tape of him planning to use wmd’s against the US in 1990 (demonstrating his willingness), and his history of having used wmd’s (again, demonstrating his willingness), and his own direct threat to attack the US mainland (repeatedly throughout the 90’s), and now we have the Pentagon report showing he was a terrorist threat. Also, don’t be so sure about those WMD’s being non-existent. It’s a nice leftist talking point, but if you don’t like President Bush’s wmd claims (as I didn’t), then please turn to the UN’s (3/6/03 Unresolved Disarmament Issues), and compare it to the ISG findings in the Duelfer report (pics alone show there was a WMD threat), as well as UNMOVIC’s last report in 2005 showing that yeah, a lotta stuff remains unaccounted for and a lotta sumpin went to Syria etc.

As to the Muslim’s taking over the US and wearing Bhurqas…I hadn’t heard that one. I’d always seen concerns about attacks not invasions etc.

Interesting how many people will believe our government is capable of intricate conspiracies (while Katrina and other fubar’s proves that capability to do anything is non-existent), but they won’t open their minds to the idea that a state-sponsor of terror might sponsor terror, or that a man who’d used wmd might use wmd, or that a terrorist group that openly pledges to get wmd and use them against the US might get wmd and use them against the US. Funniest part is that I thought “liberal” meant “open-minded,” and instead I see the most closed-minded, angry, and dismissive arguments from folks who are clearly the polar opposites of “conservatives.”

A little math:

200 Billion barrels translates into about 14286 days at 14 million barrels per day.

Thats about 39 years worth at the current import consumption rate. Add the other 45 Billion from the map (there’s likely more to be found, though) and it adds about another 9 years.

Granted, there are caveats here, some of which have been identified in previous comments:

1) Population growth will increase demand, so it’s difficult to say without some research how that would affect the future supply use rate.
2) Technological advances in internal combustion would attenuate number 1) above somewhat.
3) Increasing refining capacity is a matter of paradigm change and effort. The jobs created would also be a huge positive. Refinement by-products could be reduced by technological advancements.
4) Certain political agreements (such as the aforementioned regular purchases from Canada, etc.) would need to be adjusted or offset. Legal, economic, and political battles will ensue.
5) The liberal forces will do their absolute damndest to block this field in every way. I guarantee that multiple Mother Earth, Eco-centric, tree hugging, socialist, Birkenstock-wearing, tie-dyed agendas will include environment protection rights of both the land area itself and the effects of refinement by-products.

~V~

Good points Vortex. May I add that the profits resulting from such an oil deposit are exactly what’s going to be needed to research and implement alternative energy sources. Oops, I forgot: corporate profits bad, government handouts and socialism good

The Bakken formation is nothing new to the energy industry. Nor are oil and gas new to North Dakota; the Williston Basin in the western part of the state has been producing since 1951.

What is new is the current oil price that enables oil/gas recovery by drilling horizontally through the relatively thin Bakken layers (drill vertically 8-10,000 feet then horizontally a mile or so).

What limits development of the Bakken are shortages of rigs, labor, pipelines, refinery capacity, local infrastructure, etc. And the very real risk that Congress, in its infinite wisdom, will make it unprofitable to extract oil and gas either by taxation or regulation–or both.

To get a clear look at the Bakken activity in Mountrail County, you may want to visit the BakkenBlog website. The site is a storehouse of information encompassing local newspaper articles, state oil and gas permits, the geology, and so on.

E

Re: “We really should start to drill that Northern Alaska oil before it gets much colder up there are we can’t get it. Better to get at it when we are experiencing warmer climate up there than try when it is under ice and slow all year round.”

Under the “silver lining” category, with the Artic increasingly clear of ice, perhaps year round, tankers bringing oil back from there could bypass the Alaskan pipeline, which is starting to show its age and will be in need of substantial re-building in a few years.

Never allowing myself to be too optimistic: America has a terrible habit of using even the shortest “breathing room” as permission to adopt the attitude that the problem has now “gone away”, and donig nothing. (And, by the way, this is by no means philosophy-dependent: Liberalsare as guilty as Conservatives).

Being Liberal, I will pick on this example, but (again) “we” are just as guilty.
Imagine we did slap on some sort of imported oil tax in the 1990’s, when energy was cheap. With the booming times of that era, and low base oil price, I beleive the US could have absorbed the cost and the Market would have “provided” substantial energy savings. And the taxes could have paid down the federal debt (my particular favorite). Instead we did nothing 9and the fault for that is not one-party dependent), and now we’re still paying high prices, but he $’s are goig to fund Saudi terrorist-recruiting schools throught the Islamic World, iran and Venezuela.

Similarly, in western Colorado, estimates on recovery from oil shale deposits have varied. From 10-40%. How much oil is present in the shale deposits? That ranges from the amount discovered on Alaska’s north slope and ANWAR combined to the total ME reserve plus 20-30%. In the early 1980s, the technology existed to recover oil from the shale deposits. The pilot project at the time showed the technology and the process works. The two caveats were the cost per ton of shale it would take to extract the oil and the presence of arsenic in shale deposits that would poison the catalysts used in the refining process. Removal of the arsenic from the shale can be dealt with through chemistry and use of filtering technology. With the cost of a barrel of oil around $100, the shale option may be worth revisiting much like the Bakken formation. And, mining shale is much like other hard rock mining … it does not involve strip mining or open pit mining.

Whether we are willing to make the investment and do the work is another question.

Those damn hippie/leftist truckers have already gone out on strike

What we need is a con-voy. Where’s the Rubber Duck when you need him?

Scott,
Who are you, Jimmy Carter in 1976?

As for your corporate profits/ socialism crack, here’s the Conservative mantra: Privatize the profits, socialize the costs.
Show me a Conservative, and I’ll show you a guy who LOVES welfare. Corporate welfare.

Atleast that money will go to creating more jobs etc. Social welfare = Money down the drain!

Every time I log onto these websites,it never ceases to amaze me how ignorant,stupid and shallow-minded most of America is.I get tired of all the same old simplistic dogma by both the extreme radical left and right.And when it comes to arrogance,just who do some people think they are to decide who is more hard-working,smarter or productive based solely upon money,priviledge and staus?The next Thomas Edison or Henry Ford to make a great productive contribution to America may be a homeless person who gets discriminated against and treated like a bum based upon mere assumptions instead of open minds.

Not that I care much for liberal Dems like Barack Obama,either.He belongs in the same extremist mental retard category as Rush Limp-brains.I’d rather have either Hillary or a more moderate Republican like McCain for our next Prez than just another extremist cornflake to replace Bush.

Every time a large oilfield like the Bakken is found,all these ignorant,science illiterate,factually illiterate conservative rednecks gush enthusiastically that it’s going to last forever.But when you do the math,it’s still only just a stop-gap measure that will keep us supplied only a few more years at current rates of consumption(if the rate doesn’t increase even more).We still need other alternatives like growing renewable industrial hemp or algae grown in algae ponds or whatever.

What ever happenrd to the old-fashioned ingenuity America used to be famoous for? We have all these ignorant naysayers looking for every reason why a new idea will not work instead of brain-storming and problem-solving why it will.

As for “infinite oil” vs “peak oil”,this is pure delusional,wishful thinking. How can it be infinite if the size of the planet itself is finite? Even if the entire planet was a hollow sphere filled with oil(and it’s not.It’s molten iron inside),it would still be finite.

As the price of crude ascends, the economic viability of difficult finds like Bakken increases. I worked for Amoco & the Williston refinery was near the Canadian Leominster facility already tapping into the shale.

But those mean environmentalists who run DC [along with Archer Daniels Midland] won’t allow the US to tap into its crude. They used to call Bob Dole the Senator from ADM. All the corn state senators [about 40] are for ethanol, the biggest scam in the history of the USA, something akin to tulipmania in Holland in the 17th c.

Gasoline is $9.51/gal in Netherlands. Clearly, raising the price isn’t going to raise the incentive to make magic Jetson’s cars.

WOW, I spent so much time reading all this and all I got is pretty much the same thing I see on C~SPAN or CNN… We need to do this we need to do that but what I do hear is we need to drill and drill ASAP, even is it takes a few years to see any results… What stands in our way… Millionares, Billionares, tree huggers, spotted owl freaks, moose lovers, and any other land and animal lover out there…. When is a human life compare to an animal, when my 1 month old son needed surgery we had to drive over 100 miles to a children’s hospital… That week I drove that trip over ten times and the amount of gas I used was out of sight, what if that gas was MADE IN THE U.S.A. and right in my back yard, maybe a childrens hospital could have been closer, one paid with the profits of oil companies right here in the US… But no no one wants these in MY BACK YARD or YOU WILL RUIN THE ANIMAL LIFE…. Now think of George Bush, either one, where did they get their money or how about 90% of the political people out there, off of oil, they have own oil properties or had oil stock… Oil goes up, they get money, oil goes down they loose money…. Next time we vote, do alittle research on who you choose to send to Washington…. Next time you vote, think about wheres the closest childrens hospital or cancer hospital or even a food bank then think wheres the closest gas station or count how many SHELL stations there are in your city…. The money that could come from these billions apon billions of US oil could lower taxes, lower fuel for heating, lower food prices, could fund new research for cancer, aids or any other illness, could make more jobs with better pay, could preserve land for animals… There is so much that can come from MADE IN THE U.S.A. oil… We as people just need to do our home work when we vote…..

I doubt that environmentalists really have more clout in Washington than the oil industry. We hear a lot about tree huggers getting hot over plans to drill on land that was set aside as a wildlife preserve but that doesn’t really stop the industry from drilling new wells elsewhere. Nor does it relate to building new refineries.

Whats with the United States look at the stats so much oil is from outside the country but we pump alot as well. Its because we are holding onto all are oil from here and waiting for more country to have a high demand for it and we will be a large exporter of oil like the middle east countrys.

the 50% recovery of oil in the bakken is completely unrealistic. the latest estimates are that only 1.5 to 2% of the oil is recoverable. so about 4.3 billion barrels, which is about 7 months of the US consumption. that fiqure is thought to be unrealistic by many in the industry. at the rate that they are drilling now and the production rates, this field will be exhausted in about 12 years.

there is more oil in Colorado (but the enviromental wackos won’t let drilling happen there, and the recovery cost is high) it is in granite formations and is hard to extract.

There’s this Bakken area….and we got.. NO ACTION!
Anwar………………………….and we got.. NO ACTION!
Oil Shale/not profitable til 30+ a barrel…NO ACTION!
WORLDS LARGEST COLA RESERVES! ….NO ACTION!

Now to the LEFTIES!! Those beloved TREE HUGGERS!! They do NOT want us to use any of that “nasty” stuff above…. so how about…..

ELECTRIC wind farms??? Green power!! NO ACTION!!
“keep martha’s vineyards view pristine….for the rich lefties….

SOLAR!! YEAH!!! Power plant big enough to help juice So. California! NO ACTION!!
“um, turtles and desert rats habitat may suffer. after all it only takes 20,000 acres of mirrors to do what ONE 20 acre consuming Coal plant would use .. but coal is BAD!! So, no power!!!

Electric cars..YEAH!! THAT’s the ticket!! No pollution!!! um,, yeah, but without the NEW power plant that you stupid jackass LIBERALS won’t let us build… how do you plan to RE-CHARGE em at night??????? Dumbass!!

Ok.. how about Nuclear power plants???? Even the stupid FRENCH have them down to a clean running science!!!! Even our foolish leader says it’s COOL for IRAQ to have nuke power…so…WHY NOT US?!?!?!?!?!

So you see folks,if it’s up to Government, we’ll all freeze or broil to death in the DARK!!! They cannot seem to GET THEIR SHIT together!!!! NOTHING is “good enough”, well other than doing NOTHING!!
And THAT seems to be their plan…. NOTHING!!!!

Hey

RETARDS
………………..who actually believe this site ………..

it was 3 to 4.3 billion barrels….that does NOT EQUAL 200……C’MON PPL THIS IS 1ST GRADE NUMBER LOGIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

& just about everything else a blog throws at you…..

not that i’d expect much from a collection of middle school flunkouts with a 2nd grader’s understanding of algebra which is basically none….

U.S. Oil Reserves

“We’ve received this e-mail from our readers several dozen times, and a Google search for some of its claims turns up hundreds of results. Unfortunately, it is false. It combines and twists several different news stories and studies into a longer tale of sound and fury that ultimately signifies nothing (factually anyway).

The tale begins with an exhortation telling the reader to “go to the bottom of the page and click on the US Government link” for proof of the e-mail’s veracity. Well, we did. And the link to a U.S. Geological Survey press release from April 2008 directly contradicts the e-mail’s main assertion.

The e-mail says that the Bakken Formation oil reserve (which is located in the Dakotas and Montana) “has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil” and is estimated to hold 503 billion barrels of oil. That’s not true. It credits the USGS report from 2008 as the source of this information. It’s not.

The glowing language and more optimistic estimates about Bakken quoted in the e-mail can be traced to a 2006 Wall Street Journal story reprinted in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

……………………………………..
But the anonymous author of this e-mail omits an important caveat from that story, which said that “the lofty predictions remain unproven, and skeptics remain.”

……………………………………………..

And there was an incomplete USGS draft study of the Bakken from 2000 that included estimates ranging up to 500 billion barrels. But the Energy Information Administration explained in 2006 that it was not peer-reviewed and cautioned readers to wait for the official USGS estimate:

EIA, 2006: A draft study by the late organic geochemist Leigh Price provides estimates ranging from 271 to 503 billion barrels (mean of 413 billion) of potential resources in place. The study represents Dr. Price’s work as it stood at the time of his death in August 2000. It was conducted while he was working for the USGS, but it did not receive a complete scientific peer review by the USGS and was not published as a USGS product. A new assessment of the entire basin, due out in about a year, will provide an updated USGS estimate of the technically recoverable oil resources in the Bakken Formation.

The official estimate, contained in the USGS press release from last year, was a substantially smaller estimate of technically recoverable oil: 3 billion to 4.3 billion barrels.

The e-mail cites James Bartis as a “lead researcher of this study,” but he was actually a RAND researcher who led a different, related study. Bartis wrote a 2006 report on oil shale development and resources in the United States that said “the midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.” That’s for the entire U.S., not Bakken alone. But Bartis also cautioned that the technology to extract oil from the fields was not yet commercially viable and said that even “under high growth assumptions, an oil shale production level of 1 million barrels per day is probably more than 20 years in the future, and 3 million barrels per day is probably more than 30 years into the future.” Nowhere in his study did Bartis say that Bakken has “more than 2 trillion barrels,” as the e-mail falsely claims.

Snopes.com reviewed a similar mutation of this e-mail and traced the 2 trillion barrels of oil estimate to a tout sheet from the Stansberry Report Online, a group referenced in the e-mail. Snopes also noted that Stansberry is an investment newsletter trying to sell subscriptions. The Stansberry site appeared to be down when we tried to access it, but the tout sheet was reproduced here.

Snopes ultimatley ruled the e-mail to be a “mixture of true and false information.” We agree. But we’d add that the email’s implication that politicians, environmentalists and the media are preventing oil drilling in the Bakken is decidedly false. The Bakken has already seen drilling and was a principal cause of the recent increase in U.S. proven oil reserves, according to the EIA.

–Justin Bank

Sources
Fialka, John J. “Wildcat producer sparks oil boom on Montana plains.” Wall Street Journal, 5 April 2006.

Press Release. “3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate—.” United States Geological Survey Newsroom, 10 April 2008.

USGS Frequently Asked Questions. “What is the time frame to accomplish the retrieval of this oil and gas?” accessed 16 March 2009.

@Kael

Man o man that was a long winded post…. wouldn’t it have been easier to say

Drill baby drill! Alaska here we come!

Donald, we must remember, if we drill our own oil, Hugo might go bankrupt. Obama must take care of all the Socialist Dictators of the world. Too bad he wants to take care of them with our money. Drill in Alaska, drill in the Dakotas, drill in the Gulf of Mexico, drill off the Coast of California; all this Socialist claptrap has been nothing but a means to cripple this country while promoting the welfare of The Third World. Drill Baby Drill, let the Third World ride donkeys to worship Obama’s buddies.

Actually Kael, the U.S. Geological Survey contradicts both Next Energy News and your Fact Check article. Their page on the Bakken formation, which is updated every day, says that no one has an exact estimate on the amount of oil that can possibly be extracted from the Bakken formation. So why you can arrogantly call the people on this site retarded because the numbers on the news source they got was wrong when your own source obviously lacks veracity is a complete mystery. Then again, I can’t hold you entirely accountable for it. Fact Check is often mistaken as a reliable final arbitrator for unresolved political bickering by people like yourself who somehow found a way to put their heads all the way up their asses.

By the way, here is the URL to the USGS page on the Bakken formation.

-http://www.usgs.gov/faq/faq.asp?id=1028&category_id=94

you are an idiot for using the mid grade gas. there is no improvement in horse power or fuel economy with the mid grade compared to the lower grade

Hey you all !!!! They have already started the drilling process about two weeks ago.It’s fantastic.So everyone be positive and couragues.This huge field is going to take care of lots of problem right now,hopefuly…

DONALD BLY
MY OH MY WHAT A LONG POST, hi,
and what did they do about it, we’re at DECEMBER FIRST 2011,
JOBS ARE NEEDED. and nobody is leading, or serving the interest of this NATION.
AND nothing has been done yet,
I think that RICK PERRY WILL DO IT SOON, LET’S GET HIM THERE NOVEMBER 2012,
YES DRILL BABY DRILL
BYE

Hankster58
on 37
I think this is your best COMMENT till now, DECEMBER 1 2011,
AND THE LORD knows that you have many other good one,
BYE

DONALD BLYE
THE DINGO ATE YOUR BOOMERANG?
WE MISS YOUR SMART COMMENTS
BYE

I et the dingo… now I have indigestion!

Donald B LY
HI,
he [ dingo ] must still be alive in your tommy
because it take you too long to recover and come back.
bye

SKOOKUM
LOOK WHO I FOUND, RIGHT HERE, JUST ABOVE ME
Donald et the dingo, HE GOT SICK and got hit by the boomerang
on his way back to FLOPPING ACES,
I don’t think he saw it coming.