Massive Oil Deposit Could Increase US reserves by 10x
February 13, 08Massive 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.
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