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  • 2008-09-17 (xsd:date)
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  • Are These Accurate Claims About Untapped Oil Reserves in the Bakken Formation? (en)
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  • An item about untapped oil reserves in the Bakken formation (which lies within portions of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana) appears to have been taken from a tout sheet intended to sell subscriptions to an investment newsletter. Just poking around the Internet recently, I simply Googled the search Untapped U.S. Oil Reserves, and the result (like the current price of a gallon of gas - BLEW ME AWAY! Go ahead, take a minute and see for youself! Never mind, I'll share some of the highlights I found, the post read. (We've posted the entirety of the post at the bottom of this article. It is vaguely true in the sense that geologists have estimated there is a good deal of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in that area, and as the price of crude oil increases and the technology for extracting resources from formations like Bakken improves, that area becomes more and more economically viable as a source of oil for the U.S. However, the estimate of over 500 billion barrels of oil to be recovered from the Bakken formation is an overly optimistic one based on incomplete, outdated information. A November 2006 report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) stated that: The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released its assessment of undiscovered oil resources in the Bakken formation in April 2008, and although it reported a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that could be recovered from that area compared to its 1995 estimate, the 2008 USGS estimate was still far short of the 503 billion barrel volume cited above: Certainly 3.65 billion barrels of recoverable oil is nothing to sneeze at, but a little perspective is in order. The U.S. currently imports an average of about 10 million barrels of oil per day (for a total of about 3.65 billion barrels of oil per year), so even if all the estimated undiscovered oil in the Bakken formation were extracted today, it would only be enough to wean the U.S. off of crude oil imports for one year. That's still a good thing, but it's not nearly enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight as claimed above. As for the second part of the article, a 2005 study co-authored by James T. Bartis for the RAND Corporation (a nonprofit research organization) noted that estimates had placed upper range of shale oil resources to be found within the Green River Formation range of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming at between 1.5 and 1.8 trillion barrels. However, the report also stated that not all of that oil was recoverable and offered a midpoint estimate of about 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil shale resources. Moreover, the report also noted that even under high growth assumptions, an oil shale production level of 1 million barrels per day (about 10% of the amount of oil the U.S. currently imports daily) is probably more than 20 years in the future, and depends upon scientists overcoming some substantial obstacles first: Variations: A March 2011 version morphed the 2008 e-mail's claim That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight into That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight. (en)
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