Bakken Formation Could Boost Oil Reserves
We’ve written about the Bakken Formation before (most recently, in 2006), but according to various sources (I haven’t seen anything too solid on this, anyone else?) a new report to be released by the USGS within the next month will quantify the amount of oil in the formation beneath Montana and North Dakota.
Caveat: Most of the blogs currently talking about this topic are websites that lean pretty heavily to the right side of the political fence and are proclaiming this is the key to America’s energy independence.
While true in a sense, all of these sites seem to completely overlook the highly negative implications that mining and processing these oil shales will have on both the environment and climate change. The key to energy independence isn’t to find more oil elsewhere, it’s to stop using it.
The Bakken Oil Formation, which covers North Dakota and portions of Montana and South Dakota, is believed to have 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The 200,000 square mile reserve that[sic] was initially discovered in 1951.
In 2007, EOG Resources of Texas drilled a single well in Parshal N.D. that is expected to have yielded 700,000 barrels of oil. Marathon Oil is investing $1.5 billion and drilling 300 new wells.
Wow. 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil is an absolutely absurd amount. According to various reports, Saudi Arabia has around 300 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
Update [Oct. 17 2008]: I notice this post in particular has been one of the more visited articles on this website. Here is a link to the report that the USGS released about the Bakken Formation back in April. According to the report, there are only 3 – 4 billion gallons of recoverable oil in the formation, not the 175 to 500 billion that was quoted in the article up above.
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.
Similar Posts on Geology News:
- Montana / North Dakota has more oil than Alaska?
- Bakken Report to be Released Thursday
- Gas Hydrates on Alaska’s North Slope
- USGS: Oil Reserves May Not Be As Low As Thought
- Gas Hydrates on Alaska’s North Slope Hold One of Nation’s Largest Deposits of Technically Recoverable Natural Gas
I’m curious as to the negatives associated w/ the Bakken oil fields; aside from the environmental concerns you mentioned in your post. If there is so much oil in the Bakken fields, then why are we just now tapping into it? It was discovered in 1951; so, did we have some major technological advancements in oil discovery processes that put this field back on our radar? Or, did we just forget about this field? I’m confused as to why this volume of oil is just now being discovered? Also, is this oil extremely deep or is it hard to process (similar to the oil sands)? What can prevent us from pumping this field and bringing the oil to market?
Thanks.
According to what I read on Energy and Capital’s website, the technology is just now been drilling for this oil possible – it was pretty much abondoned before because drilling for it was so difficult. They say it is a cleaner oil, not like the oil sands in Canada, and extrating it is only costing $16.00 per barrell. go to http://www.energyandcapital.com and read all about it.
“mining and processing these oil shales will have on both the environment and climate change” ?
There won’t be any mining involved. They will just be regular oil wells. Most likely they will drill into lower units because there are several units bellow the bakken that produce more oil.
The Bakken is mostly made up of shale (source rock). It’s not a very good reservoir rock. The numbers you have up there are not recoverable oil. They are OOIP numbers. (Original Oil in Place) Those numbers are just estimations of the amount of oil that could have been generated based on area and organic content of the rock. Porosity and permeability are very low in the Bakken so even with the latest drilling technologies we can still expect to get less than 10% of the OOIP. I would bet more like 1-2%, but that still works out to be a lot of oil.
“all of these sites seem to completely overlook the highly negative implications that mining and processing these oil shales will have on both the environment and climate change. The key to energy independence isn’t to find more oil elsewhere, it’s to stop using it.”
A). If we shut off the world, meaning absolutely no man-made CO2 from fossil fuels anywhere on the globe, we will have reduced the greenhouse effect by a whole 1%…maybe.
B). Since we cant shut off the world, and it will be a while until we find a way to completely avoid C02 emissions, we are limited to fractional reductions, which mean fractions of a percent reduction in global climate change. And even this would cost alot of money, while lower income Americans, struggling to pay for more expensive food, gas, etc, are losing their homes and possessions.
C). Developing countries, including soon to be mammoth China and India, will make up for whatever sacrifices we make, probably in multiples.
I`d rather see more people being able to put food on the table and keep their homes than investing in trying to prevent fractions of a percent of greenhouse gases being emitted into the air.
Report came out today.
4.3 billion is what a news station in Montana ran. I have yet to see the report, but it’s probably fairly close if you count the Canadian side.
Hope I can answer your question in somewhat simple terms. The problem that has hindered production in the past is that the oil is entrapped in the pores of shale so it is not allowed to flow. In most of the fields that have been produced, the source rock is sandstone. The oil can freely flow through it just like water through a sand water filter. Hence, “poking a hole” in the formation allows the oil to flow through that hole. Think of this formation as a huge, thin slab of cement with oil trapped in it. Drillling verticle holes only allows oil to flow from that hole. By drilling horizontally through the slab, you can drain from the length of the slab. Horizontal drilling is often much more difficult and has only been around since the late 1990’s. What makes it even more difficult is that you have to create manufactured permeability since shale is non-permeable. Consider that slab of cement as if it were the cream of an oreo cookie and you only wanted to drill a hole sideways through that oreo. Now imagine that you wanted “canals” through the cream so that you could drain the whole cream section and not just the part that you drilled through. To do this, water and sand are pumped at incredibly high pressure to fracture the shale. Think about blasting away cement with sand and water. Now think about doing that in a controlled manner by pumping down a well bore that is vertical for about 2 miles then goes horizontal for several miles. That is the challeng that people had faced for years. It has just become feasible in the last 4-5 years.
And while it can be considered economically profitable with the current price of oil, the question is “is it economically advantageous?” For most big oil companies, it is not. This is not the only “new” discovery in the world. These same technologies make many other areas more profitable. Most companies would rather spend 1 billion to make 100 billion than spend 30 billion to make 200 billion.
Thanks to Ben and others for their informative comments. Some other comments are just off-the-mark. Sure we have to get off oil eventually, but right now we need it – for political stability, for the economy, for people to basically survive. Everything revolves around energy. As for oil shale, I had my fingers burned some years back. It is not easy to extract, it is expensive to extract, it is not good on the environment, and it can send companies broke. Some of the new technology is still unproven in the field. As for some comments by purported investment advisors stating that one barrel in the ground equals $100 of value, that is plain rubbish. If they cannot get the oil out quickly enough, and enough of it, and at an economic price, it could be worth zilch. Shale oil is marginal oil made economic by the increase in price over the last few years.
horizontal drilling at $16/bbl.seems logical and reasonable to me,but you always have nay-sayers and distractors coming out of the wood work.it has been common knowledge of vast majority of people for decades.hopefully with dems in charge there will ba a changing of the guard,and big oil will not be the prevailing power sincerely bill purser
This field needs to be nationalized and not turned over the big oil. this is national security at stake. If we can get 20 years of regulated oil we can move to other technologies without any pressure from Russia, Iran etc. this could put us back on top. It is too important to leave to big business…….we the people own this.
I read your message with great interest. I do disagree with your statement:
“The key to energy independence isn’t to find more oil elsewhere, it’s to stop using it.”
This doesn’t make sense. The key to energy independence is to satisfy energy consumption from available domestic sources.
One day, oil will become scarce (costly) enough to enable the free market to provide cheaper alternatives, hopefully from domestic sources. Until that day comes, I recommend holding off on suggestions that we stop using oil.
There are in this country a number of leftwing nuts who want to destroy America’s ability to supply our energy needs without being enslaved by OPEC and the others.
Enviromentalists need to be lined up against the wall and given a swift kick in their rear ends to wake them up and straighten them out.
Our country has grown and prospered with an abundant supply of energy. Without that supply of oil we will die on the vine.
Tony,
One could argue this doesn’t have very much to do with environmentalism, but with pure economies of scale. We import so much of our oil, that the amount of available oil in the United States will have a negligible effect on whether we become energy independent or not.
Also, I should probably update my post since a report from the USGS says there are only 3 – 4 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Bakken Formation.
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911