Peak Oil: Meet Bakken Formation
The Bakken geologic formation straddling the border of the US with Canada, contains a lot of oil shale, and sweet crude. Brian Wang at NextBigFuture looks at the possibility that there may be another "Saudi Arabia's worth" of oil under the plains of Saskatchewan and North Dakota.Estimates are anywhere from a conservative 25 billion barrels of oil in place, to a high estimate by the United States Geological Survey of 400 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken formation. Not only is the oil plentiful, but it's high quality too, 41 degree light sweet crude. The Bakken formation is a formation of black shale, siltstone, and sandstone. The formation lies beneath the Mississippian formation, Saskatchewan's current source of light sweet crude. The Bakken formation is situated beneath southeastern Saskatchewan, southwestern Manitoba, and North Dakota.No one expects such regional oil deposits to give North America independence from the "dictator's oil" of Russia, the Persian Gulf, Africa, or Venezuela any time soon. Industrial economies necessarily draw their energy from a wide variety of sources--particularly in the age of a booming India and China, with their huge, growing energy demands.
In 2007, EOG Resources out of Houston, Texas reported that a single well it had drilled into an oil-rich layer of shale below Parshall, North Dakota is anticipated to produce 700,000 barrels of oil.____>Brian Wang (much more with links)
It is interesting to note that Saskatchewan has huge deposits of tar sands farther north, in addition to the potentially enormous deposits of oil shale and sweet crude within Bakken. Will Regina and Saskatoon begin taking on some of the more affluent aspects of Dubai?
Here is a pdf document looking at the estimate of oil within Bakken
It is important for those who truly wish to understand the current energy situation, to know that there is a tremendous shortage of skilled and trained manpower to develop all of the reserves known to exist--and a much greater shortage of trained and skilled manpower needed to explore and discover the huge oil fields likely to exist, but remaining undiscovered. Peak oil is actually a euphemism for the shortage of trained and skilled workers.
Labels: Canada, oil, oil production, peak manpower, peak oil, tar sands
posted by al fin at 7:50 am
4 Comments:
This discovery, along with the recent discovery under Brazil, was obvious to anyone looking at geological history maps of the Earth.
Coal comes from land life. Oil comes from ocean life. Coal is so plentiful that no one has ever bothered to prospect for it. All coal in mined in places where someone happened to stumble over an exposed seam. The bio mass of ocean life is probably 10 times that of land life. Land life has been around for about 380 million years. Ocean life (in single-cell form) has been around for 3.8 billion years. This alone suggests that there is way more oil than the peak oil pundits suppose. So, where is all that oil?
The oil will be found in places that used to be underwater for millions of years. The Mississippi river valley is one contender. Another is much of modern day Brazil. Both of the recent find seem to confirm this notion.
Of course, it is only common sense that we find a way to make hydrocarbon fuels renewable. The recent developments in synthetic biology suggests a way to do this. Synthetic biology would be a far more efficient method then this agricultural bio-fuels that many states (such as my own) are starting to mandate. This just goes to show that the liberal-left people are incapable of understanding economics.
Which one am I? Am I a republican who smokes pot? Or am I a democrat who took economics classes?
Thanks for commenting, Kurt. You make some very interesting points.
Lifestyle choices of readers are irrelevant to me, as are nominal political parties. It is the way a person thinks that matters.
I was born in Regina and lived there until after graduating from my undergrad in Computer Science.
Real estate there was flat at say C$100K for an avg house. Prices have doubled there and more than doubled in Saskatoon. In the last year or two.
Question: Does anyone know the oil companies that are operating in the Bakken or where to find this info.
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“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell
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