Name:
Location: Pantego, Texas, United States

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Horizontal drilling to recover petroleum products can change the energy picture for the United States. In the Fort Worth area the Barnett shale natural gas field is extimated to contain about 150 billion cubic feet of methane per square mile of which nearly half can be obtained by horizontal drilling methods. Here is an estimate of what horizontal drilling can do in Montana and the the Dakotas:

February 13, 08
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.


If there are 200 billion barrels of oil recoverable over 50 years, the potential is 11 million barrels per day. That could wipe out the US imports from countries other than Canada and Mexico. That would help us a lot in regard to the politics of the Middle East. If we would drill in ANWR and in coastal areas, such as off of Florida where the Chineses are drilling, the US could be an oil exporter. If the Colorado shale oil and Canadian Oil Sands potential of over two trillion barrels are considered, it will be centuries before the world runs out of oil.

There is also some horizontal drilling going on in other areas. In East Texas there are now wells being drilled to 19,000 feet, but I don't know what is being sought nor how successful the wells are. But, it costs a lot to drill to a depth of 19,000 feet, so the oil companies must think there is a large potential reward.

Imagine the distress of the "greenies" as they read about these potential petroleum reserves. Surely they must be working on how to stop drilling in the Dakotas.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home