Oil Deposit Could Increase US Reserves 10x

HighWizard notes the upcoming release, on Thursday, of a report by the US Geological Survey on the Bakken Formation. This is an oil field covering 200,000 square miles and underlying parts of North and South Dakota, Montana, and Saskatchewan. A geologist who began surveying the field, before dying in 2000, believed it may hold as much as 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Later estimates have ranged to the hundreds of billions of barrels. Such a reserve would go a long way toward securing US energy independence.

Comments

We have more oil?

[symbolset]

I wonder what this does for theories of for oil. Some people theorize that petroleum is left over from the formation of the earth, rather than created by the fossilization of carbon life forms.

This reserve may be difficult to tap fully because of the nature of the rocks. I wonder if nuclear weapons would help. I guess it depends on how and where they were deployed.

How many tons of CO2 would be created with the burning of 500 billion barrels of oil? BTW, 500 billion barrels of oil would be about 1/6th of the world's oil reserves.

Is there really that much oxygen in the atmoshpere to burn all that? Let's see. The earth's atmosphere weighs 5 quadrillion metric tons... OK, no worries there.

but, but, the global warmings! The sea level could rise 50 feet in the next century. [checks current elevation of homestead] OK, that's fine.

But it would be hot! [checks average temps for homestead] ok, yeah, I can get behind that.

What about the polar bears? [checks polar bear shares in 401K] We're looking good!

But the crops! The crops won't grow! [Checks map of world showing land in permafrost] Looks like a net gain to me.

Ok, yeah! We have more oil! Can we exploit it faster than we have more people?

Re:We have more oil?

[Itchyeyes]

I'm a petroleum engineer who works for an independent oil and gas company that has recently become active in the Bakken formation in North Dakota. So let me try and answer these questions one by one.

I wonder what this does for theories of for oil. Some people theorize that petroleum is left over from the formation of the earth, rather than created by the fossilization of carbon life forms.

This theory is complete and utter bunk. Nobody, and I really mean nobody, seriously invested in the search for petroleum reserves subscribes to it. The Bakken is a traditional petroleum reservoir where the hydrocarbons are created by biological matter subject to intense heat and pressure.

The reason that the Bakken is just now considered a viable reservoir is not because more oil has been generated but because the technology and price of oil have advanced enough to where it's now a viable and economic source of oil. The current buzz about the Bakken is specifically relegated to horizontal wells, a technology that has just recently come into its own.

This reserve may be difficult to tap fully because of the nature of the rocks. I wonder if nuclear weapons would help. I guess it depends on how and where they were deployed.

I'm assuming this is a joke, but nuclear weapons have actually been tested in oil fields to increase production. Traditionally, a well is hydrolicaly fractured with pressure to increase the permiability of the rock and increase the ease in which the hydrocarbons can flow. However, explosives can produce a similar result. Nuclear explosives though are actually poor tools to fracture a well with since the intense heat "glasses" the rock and prevents flow.

How many tons of CO2 would be created with the burning of 500 billion barrels of oil? BTW, 500 billion barrels of oil would be about 1/6th of the world's oil reserves.

Fewer than would be produced generating the same amount of energy with coal, which currently provides about 70% of our energy in the US. Even if we all decide today that we're going to swear off fossil fuels, the process of converting our society to the alternatives will take decades, decades in which we will still rely on millions of barrels of oil every day.

Re:We have more oil?

[Itchyeyes]

I'm continually stunned by the abundance of misinformation our there about how oil is produced and distributed.

First of all, most of our oil does not come from Canada and Mexico. And a lot of it does come from the Middle East and our foreign policy does have a big impact on it.

Secondly, yes Exxon made $40 billion in profits last year. They also spend somewhere around $400 billion to make those profits. Big numbers mean nothing unless you put them in perspective. A 10% profit margin is nothing special.

Thirdly, there is no oil monopoly. Oil companies do not calude with each other, they compete. The oil industry is infinitely deeper than Exxon, Chevron, and BP. There are hundreds, if not thousands of independent oil and gas companies in the US alone. The people that have interests in the Bakken in North Dakota are not the majors. They are companies like EOG, Marathon, Kodiak, and Questar. These companies do not have refineries. They sell at the market price, they have no say in what their product goes for. They do not have enough reserves to make any impact on market prices even if they wanted to.

Re:We have more oil?

[spun]

People tend to forget that nuclear power comes from rock that you have to get out of the ground with effort and not some magic bean. Are you sure? Look, everyone knows magic beans grow very big very fast. The only other thing I know that grows that big or that fast is Godzilla. Who got that way from radiation. Ergo, the beans must be radioactive.

Obviously, we should grow more of these beans.

Re:We have more oil?

[BlueParrot]

Well, technically we have already mined enough uranium that if we would just quit this retarded scheme where we use 1% of it and then throw it away we'd be set for centuries. Uranium mining continues because it is presently cheaper than reprocessing spent fuel, not out of necessity. Take my home country, Sweden, as an example. Over the lifetime of the present generation of nuclear reactors ( 60 years ) we will have built up some 12.000 metric tonnes of spent fuel rods. 96% of that spent fuel is still Uranium and actinides, which if recovered and fissioned would release enough energy to keep the reactors running for a millennium and a half. Of course, this is before we take into consideration that for each unit of enriched uranium fuel there will be several units of depleted uranium ( which can also be fissioned in fast reactors ) thus extending the resource further. Simply put, existing technology could supply our present energy demand for thousands of years without any mining. You would have to construct a waste repository, which over a few thousand years would accumulate the enormous amount of waste equal to about the amount of milk we consume in a single month.

Now, obviously this is a quantity which is far larger than what we could possibly figure out a way to safely store given 40 - 50 centuries of scientific development, so instead our energy plan is based on the idea that if we subsidize wind power for sufficiently long, they can indefinitely continue to increase in efficiency at the same rate as they have done historically (never mind that pesky theorem of fluid dynamics which sets a theoretical limit at about twice of present achievements ). /rant

Re:We have more oil?

[aurispector]

I can actually *remember* the lines to fill up . All the arguments about energy policy here are bunk except for one; cost, pure and simple. With oil, you stick a big straw in the ground and suck it out, then boil it to break it down into gas and stuff. Then you put it in your car and burn it. Nothing else is that cheap or simple and has as much energy per gallon.

The hidden advantage of the current prices is that other technologies become economically viable for development. Besides, there's plenty of OIL right now - current high gas prices are due to a relative lack of refining capacity. I'd bet that when gas hits $5 a gallon in the US, suddenly new refineries will spring up, but also more alternate energy sources will become competitive. THIS IS THE KEY. Once it's really worth it to try out new technologies (a prius does not yet save you money in terms of total cost of ownership), we hit critical mass for research and funding and the market takes care of the rest. Economies of scale will reduce the costs and after a while oil isn't all that profitable, especially when the easily pumped deposits dwindle and it's more expensive to suck it out of the ground.

Re:We have more oil?

[RatPh!nk]

We actually have plenty of refining capacity.
I just want to point this out:

The US total refining capacity was 17,443,492 barrels of oil/day, which yields on average, 340,148,094 gallons @19.5gallons gas/barrel of oil. The current consumption of gas in the US is 388.6 million gallons/day (as of 2006)

If those numbers are correct, we are at a 48,451,906 gallon/day shortfall of US domestic production capacity. Since no one wants a refinery in their backyard, there hasn't been a new one built since the 1970's (The last refinery built in the US was in Garyville, Louisiana, and it started up in 1976.)

So "we" as in the US, have a serious lack of refinery capacity.

Sources:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/eng99/eng99288.htm
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntn12966.htm

Re:Nice

[snl2587]

I'm not going to hold my breath.

I wouldn't. Even with that much oil it still is going to run out someday. If anything we should leave it alone for now to ensure that we don't end up with massive shortages as we transition to alternative fuel sources.

Dear Canada,

[circletimessquare]

Dear Canada,

Concerning this oilfield which lays below the Dakotas and Saskatchewan: if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? You watching? And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake... I... drink... your... milkshake! SLURP I drink it up!

Bludgeonly yours,
the USA

Ssh! Don't tell anybody!

[flyingfsck]

We got to finish off the Arab oil first, to reduce their political influence in the world.

Re:Securing energy independece...until it's gone

[I Like Pudding]

WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA?

Wow, imagine what this will do for gas prices!

[epp_b]

Absolutely nothing!

Re:Giant shale fields...

[Itchyeyes]

I think you're confusing oil shale with plain old shale. The Bakken is a traditional shale formation, so recovery costs are not that high. Wells are generally economic as long as the price of oil stay above around $70/bbl. And no this won't make the Dakota's like West Virginia. The reason the Bakken is now economic is because of advances in horizontal drilling. When wells are drilled horizontally they are spaced much farther apart. Currently Bakken wells in North Dakota are drilled about 1 to every square mile. A standard oil well will take up about 3-5 acres of surface area in that square mile.

I am not a petrol engineer but I know Chinese

[Travoltus]

And in China they say "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

So it takes decades to convert our society to renewable energy. That means we start TODAY. In earnest.

The conversion of America to alternative, clean, renewable energy (and not the Ethanol Scam) is an engineering and collective will issue, not a scientific issue.

If I were President, my plan would be to take a manual transmission approach to the issue.

Here's how my "Manhattan Project" would go:

Gear 1 - the quick, short term stuff. Corporate tax breaks and subsidies for electric car production. Electric cars have existed - even electric SUV's (the old RAV-4, anyone? Don't tell me I'm wrong, I NOW HAVE ONE - they're just not being made anymore).

Tax breaks and rebates for solar energy panels on houses and apartments. BIG breaks and rebates, proportional to the kilowatt/hour rating of the installed system. We fund this tax break by stimulating the economy - solar energy purchases and then the resulting rise in consumer spending as energy prices decrease ESPECIALLY DURING THE BOILING HOT SUMMER.

Start funding and constructing pebble bed nuclear power plants. Go bare knuckle with the environmentalists. James Lovelock, the founder of the Gaia Theory, supports this as an intermediate step towards cleaner, more renewable energy in the future. This should take 20-30 years to realize the benefits. Best to start now.

Gear 2 - Incentives for solar powered electric chargers for gas stations to power up electric cars. Make use of the existing infrastructure to change the infrastructure.

Start construction on a 500 sq mile solar farm in a sunny, remote location. Or break up said solar farm into several sunny locations around the country. This is enough power for the entire world during the day.

Slowly phase out coal power plants when exceeded by its solar cousins, but leave enough to take care of night time/bad weather issues.

Government contracts to research higher miles-per-charge for cars.

Gear 3 - A nationwide "give back to the power grid" incentive for homes. Basically, people who generate solar power on their rooftops while they are at work and nothing's going on in their house, profit when they're using no power and their solar panels are pumping energy back into the grid. They get 100% MARKET VALUE for that energy - exactly 1 for 1 versus what they would pay if they used it. Adjusted daily, weekly or monthly, however it goes.

Bigger Government contracts to research higher miles-per-charge for cars. Performance based. Now we start pushing for conversions of the big haulers (big rigs), as well as pushing them to bio diesel with emphasis on converting used veggie oil, etc.

Gear 4 - the first pebble bed nuclear plants go online. Drastic "as immediate as possible" cutbacks in coal and oil powered plants but not enough to completely offset the new nuclear plants.

More Government contracts to research higher miles-per-charge for electric and biodiesel-powered big rigs. Performance based.

Gear 5 - shutdown of all remaining polluting (Coal/Oil) power plants as all planned nuclear reactors go online and the solar farms are up, and over 50% of all US homes are solar powered.

Hopefully at this point we won't need Government contracts for high miles-per-charge cars; the market should reach critical mass. Research for electric and biodiesel powered big rigs continues until every new rig produced runs on one or the other.

Manhattan project complete. The big mushroom cloud you see is the giant earth-shattering KABOOM that is OPEC corporate heads exploding along with their profits.

Re:I am not a petrol engineer but I know Chinese

[drsmithy]

Invest in decent public transport. There should be no _need_ for anyone living within 10-20km of the centre of any reasonably large city (few hundred thousand people and up) to own a car.

Re:Bring the boys back home, send em up N

[Rei]

B) This is about oil reserves INSIDE THE UNITED STATES

Actually, the Bakken formation extends into Canada, too.

The Bakken has a rather interesting history. Estimates on how much oil it produced have varied a lot. Back in the '70s, they thought it only had about 10B barrels -- which is a lot, but not when it's spread out over such a huge formation. To make matters worse, the formation is a dozen meters or so thick in most places. All together, recovery rates were expected to be 1-3%, and expensive at that. Not many takers.

Things have changed. After Price's paper that predicted over 400 billion barrels, computer simulations have been developed; the latest runs expect 200-300 billion barrels. Furthermore, horizontal drilling means that you can enter the thin formation and then run along it; this is what is used in the very successful Elm Coulee field.

The Bakken is just one minimally tapped deposit. There's absolutely no shortage of recoverable oil in the world. The problem is the consequences of recovering and burning it all.

C) The US is moving to 'alternative fuels'. The debate is not over whether or not to, but how big a priority it is.

Are you kidding? There's a huge debate over whether or not to, especially after the most recent papers suggesting that even sugarcane ethanol leads to more greenhouse gasses than gasoline. Let alone the fact that there's a widely growing acceptance that, despite the momentum, corn ethanol is a huge blunder. There's the food-for-fuel competition (food prices are up 40%, mostly from fuel prices and alternative fuel pressure). Now, I think it's good that corn prices aren't as artificially low as they used to be, but now they're artificially high, and everything is getting pushed up by the increased demand for biofuel land -- even other staples like wheat.

And what about cellulosic ethanol, this supposed panacea? This is one thing that drives me crazy. Look at how most big cellulosic ethanol companies are making the stuff. They turn the biomass into syngas (CO+H2) by burning it in a poorly oxygenated environment, and then use a complex, inefficient biological or catalytic process to convert it into ethanol. Well, here's the thing: we've been making syngas into *gasoline* for most of a century. That's how Nazi Germany and Apartheid-era South Africa kept their engines running (excepting, in the case of Germany, after we bombed most of their facilities). And it's a relatively efficient -- 70% or so. So, instead of making a fuel that we're *already set up for*, we're instead making a *less dense* fuel that we can only use in *limited quantities* in most cars and *can't ship in our pipelines*. Why? Because "cellulosic gasoline" isn't a buzzword. Nobody likes the word "gasoline", but lots of people like the word "ethanol". You get more investment, you get more tax breaks, and on and on. So the inferior solution gets chosen.

Anyways, if you want to *actually* clean up your act, either increase your MPG or switch your miles over to electricity (the significantly higher thermodynamic efficiencies of power plants mean that even dirty power plants run a car cleaner than a gasoline engine -- plus, electricity is a lot easier to clean up). Biofuels are an "easy" solution that isn't really a solution at all.

Re:The real question is *SHOULD* you use it

[tacocat]

Well of course we should use it.

We're going to need every drop of it to invade all the other oil producing nations so we'll have even more oil. All sarcasm aside, this is a really going to be a set back to the American economy in the long run.

While we are spending our time and money pulling oil out of the ground we are not going to be making any effort to develop alternatives, while the rest of the world (except China) is actually going to work on developing alternative energies.

At some point we need to address the question of whether it's more important to lower the price of gas at the pump or take measures to develop more sustainable alternatives while we still have some oil to fall back onto. Alternatives to oil are not limited to the fuel pump, but all applications of oil. And plastic is going to be a hard one to replace.

Re:Exactly

[whatnotever]

For those of you that think it has any validity, try this 6 step experiment.

1) Get a drinking straw.
2) Go to a pool.
3) Start sucking the water out of the pool as fast as you can with that straw. (You probably should not swallow the water)
4) Go to the ocean.
5) Start sucking the water out of the ocean as fast as you can with the same straw. (You definitely should not swallow the water)
6) Now explain to us all how the amount of water that you sucked through the straw was dictated by reserve you are pulling from. Or try this experiment:

1) Get a drinking straw.
2) Get a really big sponge really soaking wet.
3) Start sucking the water out of the sponge as fast as you can with that straw.
4) If you start getting less water, try a different spot on the sponge.
5) Marvel at how thought experiments can prove anything you want if they are divorced enough from the phenomenon of interest, but note that mine is probably closer to the reality of oil extraction than yours is.

Re:The real question is *SHOULD* you use it

[Xarin]

A lot of people question the wisdom of continuing the oil economy, there just aren't a lot of clear cut answers. There are a lot of possibilities, and a lot of people are working hard to make those possibilities a reality, but at the moment nothing is really ready to take oil's (and for that matter coal's) place in our energy production on a large enough scale. The real issue is that US dollars are no longer backed by gold but by oil. Oil is priced, bought and sold with dollars. This is how the dollar gets its value and one reason other governments must hold dollars as a reserve currency. It also allows the US government to print a lot of dollars without any ill effects as they are taken out of the US economy and held/spent abroad. They then are repatriated by being spent on US Treasury bonds which pays for the dollars being printed backwards. The US is like the ticket booth at a fair. It prints and sell the tickets while the rest of the world spends it on the rides. To eliminate oil is to effectively eliminate the dollar and to eliminate the dollar and replace it with another currency such as the euro is to effectively eliminate US sovereignty as its economic policies will no longer be solely its own. It may also lead the US to abandon its debt obligations to the peril of banks, Social Security, pensions etc. One should not cut off one of the branches that the world economy is sitting on without seriously considering the implications.

Re:100 Billion Barrels of Greenhouse Gases

[MadMorf]

Add iron, plankton grows. Plankton absorbs CO2, then dies, sinking.
Nope. Plankton dies, releasing organo-phophates and nitrogen compounds into the water, which causes bacterial blooms, which depletes dissolved O2 levels, which causes other marine lifeforms to die, initiating a downward spiral...

Not a marine biologist, but a marine aquarium owner. Been there, done that.

Re:6000SUX

[bryce4president]

Nice joke. But the real joke is the fact that people think our gasoline consumption has some huge effect on our oil usage. Actually our automobile fuel usage only accounts for 10% of our overall oil consumption. All those plastics that our cars are made of, and almost everything else we buy for cheap is made up come from petroleum :) So the next time you are asked paper or plastic? You might want to give paper another look. (after all, last year saw the first INCREASE in forest coverage from a previous year in quite a long time...so tress are on the rebound and reproduce much quicker than oil)

Re:6000SUX

[Slovenian6474]

Last time I was at Wal-Mart and the lady started to put my purchases in a plastic bag, I said I can carry them myself. It was only a few things and an extra bag around would be slightly annoying. She replied with "That's good. Save a tree." I stopped for a second about to explain that the bag was made from petroleum, not trees. I would, infact, be saving oil. I decided not to say anything at all because my purchase consisted of several quarts of oil due to the fact that my car leaks oil like a sieve.

Re:6000SUX

[mhall119]

You might want to replace that gasket. Leave the Wal-mart employee alone.

Only 10% of oil goes to automotive gasoline?

[cnaumann]

According to this cute chart:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/whats_in_barrel_oil.html

A little more than 50% of a barrel of oil becomes gasoline.

And this little tidbit from the plastics industry:

Less than .05% of a barrel of
oil goes into making all the plastic bags used in the US while 93% - 95% of every barrel of
crude oil is burned for fuel and heating purposes. Although they are made from natural gas or
oil, plastic bags actually consume less fossil fuels during their lifetime than do compostable
plastic and paper bags.

http://www.plasticsindustry.org/about/fbf/myths+facts_grocerybags.pdf

--

Seriously, how many pounds of plastic bags could you possibly be using in a year? How many pounds of plastic on in your car? A weekly 15 gallon fill-up is about 90 pounds of fuel, or a little less than 2.5 tons a year. My whole car doesn't weight that much, and most of it is steel.

Save your bags if it makes you feel good, but it ain't gonna make any real difference.

Re:Only 10% of oil goes to automotive gasoline?

[electrictroy]

I think he has a valid point; and all it takes is a little "back of the envelope" calculations:

- I burn about 1500 gallons of gasoline per year, which is around 7500 pounds of oil-based product.

- I use about 250 bags per year, which is perhaps 10 pounds of oil-based product.

Clearly the majority of my oil usage goes towards gasoline, and the plastic bag impact is negligible... just as the other guy was telling us.

Re:Only 10% of oil goes to automotive gasoline?

[Bryansix]

Save your bags if it makes you feel good, but it ain't gonna make any real difference.

Actually the problem with plastic bags is a waste problem and not with how they are made. They are super efficient as carrying devices but then what? The catch a small breeze and now they are a litter problem bound to last for decades. The solution here is to use reusable bags. Also Ralph's (Kroger)has a program where each time you use a reusable bag you get 10 cents off the total of your purchases. I get 20 cents off each purchase because I have two of them. They pay for themselves in no time.