Massive US Oil Field Set To Start Pumping

Hugh Hewitt mentioned it on his show today and a quick search led me to the article that reports on a massive oil field in No Dakota that could yield between 200-500 Billion barrels of sweet crude. This is not the Green River oil shale formation that holds about the same amount but is much more difficult to process. Plus we have new finds in the Arctic and new technology is improving yields in old fields, we have plenty of oil to do without OPEC for good and leave that money in the US instead of financing the oil shieks of the Middle-East or kleptocrats like Chavez.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at $20-$40 a barrel.

It was not until 2007, when EOG Resources of Texas started a frenzy when they drilled a single well in Parshal N.D. that is expected to yield 700,000 barrels of oil that real excitement and money started to flow in North Dakota. Marathon Oil is investing $1.5 billion and drilling 300 new wells in what is expected to be one of the greatest booms in Oil discovery since Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938.