How come we aren't going for oil in Montana??

[trueblue2007]

Instead of drilling in our oceans and the tundra? Why not go for oil in Montana? The people in Montana including the Govenor want us to go for it. How come this info isn't being BLASTED all over the news??





from an article in the NY Post newspaper http://tinyurl.com/5q2g7c


MONTANA GOVERNOR IS SITTING ON AN OIL MINE

May 29, 2008 -- HELENA, Mont. - Here's some very good news about oil that the manipulators on Wall Street don't want you to know: there could be as much as 40 billion barrels of crude lying untouched in eastern Montana.

That's billion with a "b" - as in a ball-breaking amount for those speculators who are purposely pushing oil higher for their own selfish reasons.

Who says? Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer does, adding that his state - with fewer than 1 million residents - would be thrilled to bail the US out of its current energy predicament.


<snip>

Right now, the US Geological Service estimates that there are 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Bakken region, which also reaches into North Dakota.

"They are always conservative," said Schweitzer, who greeted me in his office dressed in jeans, a white shirt and a string tie. "There will be more. It'll probably be more like 40 billion."

<snip>

In fact, just the knowledge of such big oil deposits - together with a drop off in fuel use because of the recession and the inevitable development of alternative energy sources - might cause gasoline prices to fall substantially in the future.

<snip>

"We've been drilling out there for 70 years," said Schweitzer of the Bakken area. "People there like new oil production. In fact, the city of Sydney wants to build a refinery. Where else in America do you have a community that says, 'we want to build a refinery in our backyard?' "

[Parche]

1. Sydney

My uncle lived in Sydney, and i visited there when i was a kid in 1977

and there were lots of oil wells there at that time

:hi:

[trueblue2007]

2. This info should be blasted all over the news.

There is TONS of oil in Montana!!

[neverforget]

13. I was born in Glendive in 1971. My parents and I moved to Billings

in 1981 and it was an oilman from Sydney who bought our house. We got out of there just in time before the oil boom went tits up.

[Parche]

16. Glendive

I was stationed at Minot AFB ND and Febree 14 1985 I got out, and drove West
I remember my car broke down, either in Miles city, or Glendive, and $400 later, it was fixed!!!
stayed in Billings one night......

:hi:

[Blaze Diem]

3. Been saying this all along: Here's some links worth reading..

http://bakkenshale.blogspot.com

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601170&sid=ayj1uo_gdNI4

[Initech]

4. Why isn't this blasted all over the news?

Holy shit! This could solve our energy needs for the next 50 - 60 years!

[anigbrowl]

14. Because it's not as simple as it first appears

if you had a bucketful of oil shale from Bakken vs. a bucketful of oil from Saudi Arabia or Texas, you'd know the difference pretty fast.

Oil shale:


Oil:


Which one do you think is going to be easier to extract and then turn into gasoline?

[Blaze Diem]

20. I beg to differ on this matter...it is by far a much sweeter oil, &

tecnology currently being used and still developed will make the drill more successful.
There are pipelines being laid and a refinery for the southern area of the Bakken field is proposed.
I grew up there. Judging by the reports from home, this development will be around for a very long time.
Recently, a test well was done, drilled through the Bakken-shale formation, which is actually not very deep, and what was discovered was another pool, named Sannish Field.

With all the Oil Co.'s in the area at this time, I doubt it is anything but profitable, even at $5mill per well to drill, recoverable, and saleable.
The oil Co's are investing in this for a reason. They're not setting up shop because its a dead deal.

Its quite interesting to read just what has been learned about this formation and what they may discover as they advance in their technology.

From the Bloomberg Link:
His new wealth springs from the Bakken formation, a sprawling deposit of high-quality crude beneath the durum wheat fields of North Dakota, Montana and southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Bakken may give the U.S. -- the world's biggest importer of oil -- a new domestic energy source at a time when demand from China and India is ratcheting up the global competition for supplies and propelling average U.S. gasoline prices to almost $4 a gallon.

And unlike the tar from Canada's oil sands, Bakken crude needs little refining. Swirl some of it in a Mason jar and it leaves a thin, honey-colored film along the sides. It's light - -almost like gasoline -- and sweet, meaning it's low in sulfur.

Best of all, the Bakken could be huge. The U.S. Geological Survey's Leigh Price, a Denver geochemist who died of a heart attack in 2000, estimated that the Bakken might hold a whopping 413 billion barrels. If so, it would dwarf Saudi Arabia's Ghawar, the world's biggest field, which has produced about 55 billion barrels.

Thin Deposit

The challenge is getting the oil out. Bakken crude is locked 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) underground in a layer of dolomite, a dense mineral that doesn't surrender oil the way more-porous limestone does. The dolomite band is narrow, too, averaging just 22 feet (7 meters) in North Dakota.

[stimbox]

23. Dolemite!

[anigbrowl]

25. It's not that I think it's a bad idea

it's just not as obvious a media story. It does cost quite a lot more to extract the stuff, meaning that it's taken until the current era of high oil prices to make it a hot ticket. If it's a good deposit and we can bring the costs down (which I'm sure is possible), then great, at least for the short term (global warming and all that).

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. Because more oil might mean a lowering of prices and therefore less profit?

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. The oil companies hold the leases and have many of the wells capped.

This is part of the 81 million acres that they will not use .

[pt22]

7. There are leaseholders who will be more than happy to sell you some working interest

in any or all new wells up there! They might neglect to tell you, however, most of that oil in the Bakken will yield less energy that it will take to bring it out of the shale.

[sharesunited]

8. That oil has to be cooked out of shale. There are major CO2 consequences.

Not as bad as coal liquefaction, but significant. And you have to tear up the surface land just like strip mining.

[A HERETIC I AM]

26. That's the real key point, isn't it?

You don't DRILL for the oil held in such deposits.

You mine it.

Much different animal.

[BeHereNow]

9. I posted a thread about this yesterday- Enron is involved.

Or rather, the left overs of Enron.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3486091
You might want to read some of it.

They are now going by the name EOG Resources.
Same cast, different name.
http://www.eogresources.com/home/index.html
BHN

[mainegreen]

10. Because Bakken, while large, is phenomenally crappy?

That, unlike nice fields like Ghawar, you could sink one well, get oil (slowly, very slowly), and then sink another well practically next to it and get nothing? That it's damned near impossible to predict in Bakken just where these slow, but sweet spots are?

Bakken is a great way for any company to loose their shirt, so to speak.

[BeHereNow]

11. Uh, not... to the tune of nearly 2 billion dollars in this case:

"XTO Energy Deal Highlights Interest in U.S.-Canada Field
BY BEN CASSELMAN
Word Count: 344 | Companies Featured in This Article: XTO Energy, Marathon Oil, Hess, EOG Resources
XTO Energy Inc. agreed to pay $1.85 billion for drilling rights in an oil-producing area near the U.S.-Canadian border, highlighting the once-obscure field's growing importance. The move also reflects rising confidence by energy companies that oil will stay above $100 a barrel.

The Fort Worth, Texas, oil and natural-gas producer said it will buy rights to 352,000 acres in the Bakken Shale, which stretches across Montana, North Dakota and ..."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121202919175028377.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo

Are you saying XTO would pay that much for rights because they are
all high on crack or something?
BHN

[mainegreen]

12. Bakken is not a good field.

It's been deconstructed on other sites dedicated to just this sort of thing that Bakken will solve next to nothing.

There are a few sweet spots that will most likely produce some oil, but the claims of vast recoverable reserves are hype.

And 1.85 billion is chump change for drilling rights.

[BeHereNow]

15. And I guess the Enron boys are all high too?

ENRON OIL & GAS VENEZUELA Ltd.
Ed. Centro Profesional Complejo Eurobuilding, Piso 4, Of. 4-A,
Chuao, Caracas.
Fax: [phone]
Phone: [phone]
Contacts: Kurt D. Doerr, Vicepresidente / Gerente General

Note Kurt D. Doerr, ex-Enron man, now an officer at
EOG...http://www.eogresources.com/home/index.html

Enron was crawling with the Doerr family- now they have
all been shuffled off to the Bakken drilling team.

BHN

[mainegreen]

17. It should be clear to anyone that the Enron boys were high. But how about some numbers?

Bakken has been averaged at around 0.04 millidarcies. That fucking sucks. Compare to Ghawar at average in the hundreds (which is awesome) or the North Sea at at least in the single units of millidarcies (I think averaging around 15ish).

Even where fracturing is prevelant and the thickness of Bakken is decent, and the layer is not 10,000 feet down, you might, if your lucky, recover 10% of that region of the formation. You'll probably average around 3%. You almost certainly will have to use expensive drilling techniques. That sucks.

Bakken will produce oil. Maybe 3 months worth. That really sucks.

Tons of people have been taken by Bakken. I have no doubt this will continue.

[BeHereNow]

18. You know, a poster who lives in ND reported that Halliburton is all over his hood.

Now why would that be?

Why would he report seeing a continual convoy of
diesel belching Halliburton trucks swarming his area near the
Bakken fields?

There are more than a few companies wrangling to
get in there.

Think maybe they know something you don't?
Witness, the boom in the Canadian Oil sands
over the last 10 years.

I'm going to be leaving for an appointment soon,
but I will go looking for some numbers when I get back
and let you know what you I find.
BHN

[mainegreen]

19. Halliburton doesn't own the wells, they just build in maintain them, so they win no matter.

You can't possibly be comparing the Oil sands that are sitting on the surface to a shale formation that's sitting 5,000 feet down, can you?

Seriously?

Do you think it's been ignored all this time because nobody knew it was there? :rofl:
It's been ignored all this time because it sucked. Big time. But now were all a little low on oil, and you can get 140 dollars a barrel, so suddenly an EROI of 1.1 looks good.

Don't suckered in by promises of a magical oil field delivered miraculously under our noses by the magical oil fairy. It's a distraction from real solutions.

As I said, Bakken will make oil. It already has. It will just do so slowly, and not a whole lot.

[Blaze Diem]

21. You sound a bit disgruntled, ..just sayin'...Seriously, your statements

just don't add up to what I know to be true to this exploration & develpoment.
I disagree with you.
Guess we'll find out in the next five years or so.
What ever happened to the Bakken Oil Field???
Check back with you then.

[mainegreen]

22. Seriously, I hope you're right and I'm wrong.

But the word from the scientific authorities I trust say otherwise.

Of course, the big problem is there are two camps of authorities, and each says the other is crazy.

[Blaze Diem]

24. I don't mind being the crazy one, as long as I'm right.

Of course, the oil companies abandoned the whole field and findings back in the 80's, and are only going full force now since the profits of ppb were made possible with Bush as their leader.
Who was Bush's base?
They were promised all their dreams would come true..well maybe not for the ANWAR dreamers..at least so far, but Bush isn't done with that one yet either.
Good day to you.