Sunday, March 30, 2008

The end of Saudi Arabia and Iran....mmmmmmmmmmmmm...real


Pointed out by Michael Ledeen, via Andrew Bostom:
1) NEXT ENERGY NEWS: Massive Oil Deposit Could Increase US reserves by 10x

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America's Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC's short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

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.

The US imported about 14 million barrels of Oil per day in 2007 , which means US consumers sent about $340 Billion Dollars over seas building palaces in Dubai and propping up unfriendly regimes around the World, if 200 billion barrels of oil at $90 a barrel are recovered in the high plains the added wealth to the US economy would be $18 Trillion Dollars which would go a long way in stabilizing the US trade deficit and could cut the cost of oil in half in the long run.


2) From the North Dakota Web Site

The geological model presented by Price in his paper appears solid and is built upon considerable input by North Dakota Geological Survey geologists, samples from the ND Core and Sample Library, and the well files from the Oil and Gas Division.
A sophisticated computer program with extensive data input supplied by the ND Geological Survey and Oil and Gas Division places the Bakken generated value at 200 - 300 BBbls.

SNIP

He estimated that the Bakken was capable of generating between 271 and 503 BBbls of oil with an average of 413 BBbls.

This appears to be quite serious and real.

READ IT ALL

Saudi Arabian oil reserves which are cheaper to pump are ~260 billion barrels

Iranian Oil Reserves are about 90 billion barrels

UPDATE HERE

6 comments:

Brian H said...

And Iraqi reserves are now estimated at ~215 bn bbl, given the 100 bn or so shown in secret SH seismic surveys.

But check out Lawrenceville Plasma Physics and Focus Fusion for a development that could make the Oil Economy obsolete in less than a decade.

Epaminondas said...

Brian, I have been hounding everyone about a technological manhattan project. I have never, not since 1973, understood the lack of such an effort by universities, govt, and worst of all Mobil, Exxon etc who should have defined themselves as energy providers.

This past month for the first since the Arab Oil embargo of 73 oil was priced higher in comparative dollars.

IT
MAKES
ME
THROW
UP

35 years later the situation is worse, and repubs and dems KNEW THE SCORE. If private industry cannot act or will not act, the govt then has the final responsibility and duty to do so.

How many DARPA research projects have they funded (like what turned out to be the interent)? What possibly could have been more important than this? Not even a super nuclear weapon would have been more important.
Instead we have moved by fits and starts and excuses.

Anonymous said...

The article states that Marathon Oil i the main investor at this point. Marathon is currently listed as a domestic company that does import crude oil from the Persian Gulf which creates a conflict of interest. Marathon should cut all connections in the Persian Gulf and concentrate all financial/physical efforts on domestic production to remove any real/implied influence from ME regarding this project.

Pastorius said...

Heh. I gotta give me credit.

:)

I scooped Michael Ledeen by several days on this:

http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/03/massive-oil-field-found-in.html

Pastorius said...

Lawrenceville, and people like Craig Ventner are the real answer to our problem.

We will have to design our own fuels. In my opinion, hydrogen is not an option. It's by-product would turn out world into a greenhouse. Dinosaurs would start to roam the earth again and eat us.

:)

Epaminondas said...

I'll take the dinosaurs over $$ going to Al Saud, Al Sabah, and the mullahs.

;)

We can apply our brains to the H20 and CO2 if that ever comes to be a problem.