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Friday 6 February 2009

Oil shortage (update)

Last June I blogged about the huge oil reserves that the US had but was unable to extract because of pressure from "green goroups".

Today I read that:
"North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.

A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.

Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources.

New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger technically recoverable oil volumes. About 105 million barrels of oil were produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007.

The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000.

The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS."


The west is experiencing energy supply problems and is too dependant on Middle East countries who are more than willing to exploit their hold over oil supply for their own ends. I say drill the oil in the Bakken formation, extract the oil in Alaska and look elsewhere and if this bankrupts the vile regimes of Saudi Arabia and Iran then I won't cry a tear.

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