Posted by
Gray Ghost on Monday, September 15, 2008 6:09:46 PM
In April of 2008, the U.S. Geological Service (USGS) issued a report concerning the Bakken Field (also known as the Williston Basin). This revised report, which had not been updated since 1995, estimated the oil reserve in the Bakken Field. The drawing below indicates the area of this field:
The amount of oil in this field which is easily recoverable is estimated by this report to be anywhere between 3.0 billion barrels to as much as 4.3 billion barrels. Plus this oil is light, sweet crude!
But it gets better, various government agencies (including the Department of Energy) have estimated that the total amount of oil in this formation could be as high as 500 billion barrels. This includes oil in oil shale and oil not recoverable with today’s technology.
This number (i.e., 500 billion barrels) is larger than the entire Saudi Arabia fields. With the new techniques that the oil industry has developed over the last twenty years, it is anybody’s guess as to how much of this oil will become "recoverable" in the next twenty years.
But if the 4.0 billion barrels number is all that is correct, at a cost of $100.00 per barrel this represents a net worth to the US of $400,000,000,000.00. That is correct, 400 hundred billion dollars.
A slide show of this USGS Report can be found at the following address:
http://energy.usgs.gov/flash/Bakken_slideshow.swf
The "pdf" file of this USGS report can be found at the following address:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3021/