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Sunday, April 06, 2008

Dakotas Black Gold Rush

Can we finally say Goodbye to OPEC, Venezuela’s thug Chavez and other not so friendly oil producing nation from whom we import our oil? It appears that America has what it takes to be completely energy independent.

We’re not talking about drilling oil in Alaska, but in the Dakotas.

According to an article that appeared in Energy News at the end of March, the Dakotas Bakken play formation contains more than 200 Billion Barrels of oil, if not more.

This is far more than the 16 billion estimated for ANWR in Alaska. Just to put this in perspective, so far our nation’s oil reserve is at an estimated 21 Billion
barrels, Saudi Arabia is at 264 Billion.

Now let’s add the new figures from the new oil fields and BINGO! This has the potential to increase America’s oil production by more than 10 times.

Here is the link to the amazing article:
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news2.13s.html

According to another article that appeared in the Kiplinger’s letter, the Bakken region is not as environmentally sensitive as that of Alaska.

Surely our liberal politicians & their environmental sugar daddies will make a lot of noise, but we can’t afford to let this opportunity slip by. This is huge.

While it is without any doubt extremely exciting, one question still remains, at
least in my mind: any considerations for new oil refineries???

I hope so.
Honestaby

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here we go again, more oil leases never paid to indians. Isn't one multi million dollar lawsuit for theft of lease monies enough for this country?

Anonymous said...

Hey, maybe someone is smart enough to figure out how to get to that stuff.

Anonymous said...

The problem with the Bakken reserve, which btw was first surveyed in the 1950's is that it is not proven. In other words it is not crude oil, it is shale oil. Shale oil is a precursor to crude and not always recoverable. The oil that is recoverable from Bakken is already being pumped and is included in existing US reserves, 21 billion barrels with a current consumption life span of 12 years. So in order to get a longer span, say, at current consumption rates 120 years, the estimated recoverable shale oil from Bakken would have to be about 100 billion barrels. In the last 30 years the oil companies haven't done it and I wouldn't expect them to do so in the near future, they have no economic incentive to do so.

Anonymous said...

Well, I for one would like to see us develop "electrically" run autos, and get out of the heavy need for fosil fuels. This is an important find, and it will supplement our fuel needs without depending on the mid-east oil fields so much. We need to "sit" on the oil lobby for awhile and go electric!

A. Goetz

Anonymous said...

Anon 1:40
We have the new horizontal technology in extracting the oil, and it appears to be of a high quality, 41 degree light sweet crude, which is good for refineries.
No one is saying this is going to happen overnight, but it can definelty give us some breathing room in assessing the best way to utilise our resources, and maybe a little leverage?
honestaby