Would this end our dependence on foreign oil?

[MikeForsythe 0]

GOOGLE it or follow this link. It will blow your mind. http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

The U.S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oilmen knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota; western South Dakota; and extreme eastern Montana ... check THIS out:

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.

'When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.' says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.

'This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years,' reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin, but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.' And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada. For years, U.S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough ha s opened up the Bakken's massive reserves... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!

That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight.

2. [And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from TWO YEARS AGO, people!]

U.S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World!
Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006 Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction.

They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:

-8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
-18-times as much oil as Iraq
-21-times as much oil as Kuwait
-22-times as much oil as Iran
-500-times as much oil as Yemen- and it's all right here in the

Western United States.

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this!? Because the democrats, environmentalists and left wing republicans have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil.

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels. Untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.

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Don't think 'OPEC' will drop its price - even with this find? Think again! It's all about the competitive marketplace, - it has to.
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Got your attention/ire up yet? Hope so!

Take a few minutes to pass this email on to your friends.

If you don't take a little time to do this, then you should stifle yourself the next time you want to complain about gas prices .. because by doing NOTHING, you've forfeited your right to complain.

Time and pressure will always show you who a person really is!

[kallend 1,651]

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Take a few minutes to pass this email on to your friends.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[alw 0]

Well, yes and no. At the end of this post are two links to articles I've written on the subject.

Yes, Bakken is promising as is Green River Basin. Both require new technology, but the technology exists although it is not readily available in abundance. (Fracture Mechanics and Horizontal Drilling Techniques)

Also known but not wll publicized are huge natural gass reserves in the Appalachian Basin http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-009-03/FS-009-03-508.pdf.

All of these resources are avialable but would face regulatory, technological, and environmental challenges. On top of that, the peg point for oil to make it worth the while is about $60 a barrel.

As I stated in the article "Fix the Roof While the Sun is Shining" we can do it. We have to agree that it represents a second chance (remember the rhetoric "Drilling now won't produce results for years"?

That doesn mean we shouldn't look at alteernatives as well. More wind means we have to build more wind turbine factories. There are three blade factories in the US now for large units and they are loaded for the next several years.

We should create land grants for solar. We narrowly dodged a bullet with Solar One and Solar Two http://www.stirlingenergy.com/projects/solar-one.asp this year. Congress (that would be the Democrat Congress) only reluctantly allowed land use to progress. It's still up in the air a bit.

And even large scale biofuel from non-food feedstock like algae http://www.algenolbiofuels.com/advantages-weutilize.html will take land use legislation.

So before you invest in any of these technologies or "Huge Oil Finds" make sure to do your homework. But rest assured there are eyes on this stuff. I know the McCain Campaign has this information and I am in agreement with their methodolgy of approach. I am not quite as enthusiatic about Obama's because of the environmental lobby debt he owes on his campaign finances.

Which ever one wins, it will take a very strong lobby to move this off the dime.

OBTW the two leaders in development of these resources are Sheel and Exxon. Cut their R&D and the projects slow way down.


http://www.lonelyconservative.com/2008/10/09/energy-regulation-and-your-future/

http://www.lonelyconservative.com/2008/10/10/fix-the-roof-while-the-sun-is-shining/

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Every day is a bonus - every night is an adventure.

[kallend 1,651]

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Well, yes and no.

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So before you invest in any of these technologies or "Huge Oil Finds" make sure to do your homework.

There seem to be VERY large discrepancies between the claims in the chain email and the USGS report in the link Mike provided.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[nerdgirl 0]

"Would this end our dependence on foreign oil?"

Simple answer: no.

First, the Bakken formation is being drilled, see attached graph. It has been since at least 1971 through today.

The single largest prohibition on recovering from the Bakken has been cost. Recovery from the Bakken has cost more than has been economically viable given available methods. Or more simply, crude from the Mideast, Venezuela, Mexico, and Canada has been cheaper. There has not been an incentive in the market. If one wants to point to causal factors: it’s cost and the market. (It’s similar to the single largest prohibition on traditional solar cells.) It’s disingenuous as well as counter-factual to make it a partisan issue.

Would it end dependency on foreign oil?
Hypothetically, it could (using the latest USGS values) for approximately 1 year, 2 months and 4 or 5 days (depending on which month.) 4.3B barrels of oil (the high end of technically recoverable estimate) sounds like a lot. It *is* a lot. The US uses on average 10M barrels of oil a day. We use *a lot*.

How does technically recoverable reconcile with actually recoverable (produced)?
Here’s a discussion of the Bakken formation, the geology, and recoverable oil.

Does the email you received include any cost on recovery that oil? Technically recoverable is not the same as economically recoverable, which is not to say that the US, if that was a priority, could not choose to pay more if such an action was desired. Cheapest is definitely not always best.

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[alw 0]

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Well, yes and no.

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So before you invest in any of these technologies or "Huge Oil Finds" make sure to do your homework.

There seem to be VERY large discrepancies between the claims in the chain email and the USGS report in the link Mike provided.

There are discrepancies between a number of reports. Some are based on a report conducted by Price and LeFever in 1994 and using earlier technology for recovery. Others are more recent reports using more recent recovery methods. None of them addresses land use and mineral rights.

It's a shame that we aren't more focused as a nation on the potential and overcoming the potential problems. The reality is that there is an abundance of energy sources in CONUS + Alaska but there really isn't any energy policy to address it.

I can name only two countries that actually have a national security/energy integrated policy.

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Every day is a bonus - every night is an adventure.

[nerdgirl 0]

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As I stated in the article "Fix the Roof While the Sun is Shining" we can do it.

Thought it was JFK who said that?

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[billvon 2,435]

The Bakken is indeed a good oil resource, but:

1) we've known about it for a long time, and
2) most people think there is less recoverable oil in it than the piece says.

The email you posted estimated 500 billion barrels. The USGS estimates 3.6 billion of recoverable oil. A separate study by North Dakota estimates 2.1 billion. That's about a 3-month supply.

We are currently drilling and pumping from the Bakken; one well is generating about 50K barrels a day. Hopefully technology will improve to the point where we can recover more of the oil in it.

[alw 0]

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As I stated in the article "Fix the Roof While the Sun is Shining" we can do it.

Thought it was JFK who said that?

/Marg

My grandmother said it before he did.

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Every day is a bonus - every night is an adventure.

[kallend 1,651]

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The reality is that there is an abundance of energy sources in CONUS + Alaska but there really isn't any energy policy to address it.

Of course there is, Bush/Cheney held extensive energy policy meetings during their transition. Of course, they kept it all SECRET so no-one knows what it is.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[alw 0]

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The reality is that there is an abundance of energy sources in CONUS + Alaska but there really isn't any energy policy to address it.

Of course there is, Bush/Cheney held extensive energy policy meetings during their transition. Of course, they kept it all SECRET so no-one knows what it is.

I was at some of those meetings. I would beg to differ with your assessment.

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Every day is a bonus - every night is an adventure.

[Lucky... 0]

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Take a few minutes to pass this email on to your friends.

Last time I read that some guy out of Africa wanted me to sponsor his huge inheritance in my bank account that he couldn't safely transfer out. He was gonna give me 10%.

[shropshire 0]

Even if it is true why wouldn't you want to suck the rest of the world dry first?

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[alw 0]

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The single largest prohibition on recovering from the Bakken has been cost.

I'm going to disagree, but only on the order not on the points. The single largest prohibition is environmental/land use. There are pooling deposits that would be economical to recover but there are mineral rights issues and evironmental issues that are blocking it. In an emergency those could be swept away. No emergency exists.

The technology is relatively recent. Exxon and Total have both been very successful with them in Venezuela, but the technology is beyond most companies abilities to implement it wide scale at this time. i.e. not cost effective.

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Every day is a bonus - every night is an adventure.

[kallend 1,651]

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The reality is that there is an abundance of energy sources in CONUS + Alaska but there really isn't any energy policy to address it.

Of course there is, Bush/Cheney held extensive energy policy meetings during their transition. Of course, they kept it all SECRET so no-one knows what it is.

I was at some of those meetings. I would beg to differ with your assessment.

OK, those that were there know what went on. The rest of us were not privy to anything.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[grimmie 177]

Are they injecting steam to extract the oil at Bakken? There are a few places such as the LAK (Derek Oil and Gas) project in Wyoming that are doing this. They are sitting on an estimated 500 million barells of cold, waxy oil and are getting only 60 barrels per day out.

[alw 0]

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Even if it is true why wouldn't you want to suck the rest of the world dry first?

There is some up side to that, but there is also a big downside. At some point alternative energy sources will become competitive. Jumping too late just pumps cash into ROW economies. If you look at who might have the best climate (meteorological and political) for say solar and biomass algae, it comes up to some of the same countries that are getting the cash now.

For instance, Algenol is working with Mexico because it was too hard to get all the permitting done in the USA. They need sea water, sun, and eventually CO2. Saudi has all of that and will provide lots of solar rich land for bioreactor farms.

It's never an easy decision, but right now I think the USA could sure use the capital and tax revenues from domestic production of oil.

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Every day is a bonus - every night is an adventure.

[JohnDeere 0]

Try looking up the destin dome off the coast of florida if you want to some sad shit!!!

Nothing opens like a Deere!

You ignorant fool! Checks are for workers!

[kallend 1,651]

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Try looking up the destin dome off the coast of florida if you want to some sad shit!!!

Confusing gas with oil now?

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[MikeForsythe 0]

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Confusing gas with oil now?

Actually one has to do with the other. I work in the electric utility field. The new generation of combined-cycle systems use natural gas and are more efficient than oil fire units. The problem is that there is really only one source of natural gas in the capacity that we need and it comes from Texas by pipeline across the gulf. As a result we have to keep the oil fire units in case we lose the line. If we had multiple lines, say the Destin Dome we could do away with the old oil fire units and as a result reduce our oil dependency.

Time and pressure will always show you who a person really is!

[masterblaster72 0]

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The reality is that there is an abundance of energy sources in CONUS + Alaska but there really isn't any energy policy to address it.

Of course there is, Bush/Cheney held extensive energy policy meetings during their transition. Of course, they kept it all SECRET so no-one knows what it is.

I was at some of those meetings. I would beg to differ with your assessment.

So why were the meetings veiled in such secrecy?

Be humble, ask questions, listen, learn, follow the golden rule, talk when necessary, and know when to shut the fuck up.

[kallend 1,651]

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Confusing gas with oil now?

Actually one has to do with the other. I work in the electric utility field. The new generation of combined-cycle systems use natural gas and are more efficient than oil fire units. The problem is that there is really only one source of natural gas in the capacity that we need and it comes from Texas by pipeline across the gulf. As a result we have to keep the oil fire units in case we lose the line. If we had multiple lines, say the Destin Dome we could do away with the old oil fire units and as a result reduce our oil dependency.

Three presidents (2R, 1D) have stopped activity on the Destin Dome. Why such bipartisan action?

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Andy9o8 0]

Mike, even for those uneducated in the subject, a very (very!) simple internet search reveals almost instantly that the 500 billion bbl figure was refuted by the USGS's 2008 study estimating 3.0 to 4.3 billion bbls, or a mean of 3.65 bbls of recoverable oil. The highest estimate is that that figure would at most provide the US with a 12-month supply, and then we're back to square one.

Instead of just re-barfing a horseshit chain e-mail so that you can take yet another cheap bash at deluded, tree-hugging Democrats, why would you not use your obvious intelligence to do your own research? Is a partisan political agenda really the only thing important here?

Pssst - here's a hint: don't listen to me; check out Lisa's thread in Bonfire.

[nerdgirl 0]

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If we had multiple lines, say the Destin Dome we could do away with the old oil fire units and as a result reduce our oil dependency.

Additional expansion of drilling into the Destin Dome is still unlikely to meaningfully affect US dependency on oil and is certainly a “no” in the mid-term (5-10 years).

Like the Bakken, the Destin Dome is already being tapped, for the Destin off the coast of Alabama.

W/r/t off the coast of Florida, the decisions to not drill have largely been driven by the State of Florida. Chevron has lease on the Destin Dome off Florida. The Depts of Commerce of President GHW Bush, President Clinton, and President GW Bush have all blocked (GHWB) or refused to overturn the will of the voters of Florida & Florida State government (WJC & GWB) on drilling off Florida.

Only 0.1% of natural gas is used as vehicle fuel (data table here or see attached pie chart). Natural gas is primarily used for industrial (>30%) uses, home heating (21.6%), commercial heating (13.9%). The few natural gas powered vehicles are almost exclusively sold through California & Nevada, where the impetus in the 1990s for introducing them was largely smog reduction (not reducing US dependency on oil, foreign or otherwise).

8.1M homes (mostly older and seasonally in the Northeast) use oil for home heating. That accounts for <4% of the US use of finished petroleum products, less than half of what us used for kerosene type jet fuel (8.7% of oil use, not including aviation gas). Oil no longer has a noticeable share of the new home construction market.

The single largest use of oil – by far – is for “finished motor gasoline.”

Now, if the market affects a change the primary means of fueling automobiles, one might see some affect. We have already seen the small but notable force of the market for electric hybrid vehicles (e.g., Toyota Prius). In any event, natural gas & coal- or other-fossil-fueled generated electricity are a short term solution as the resources are finite.

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying