24 billion barrells of oil in North Dakota?

[bluestateguy]

Newt made this claim tonight. Is this even close to accurate?

On edit, I think he said barrels, not gallons.

[annabanana]

1. sounds pretty loopy to me

Is he claiming this is tar sands?

[brewens]

2. Barrels is what he said or should have. Maybe he said gallons but I see barrels being reported.

I have no clue if it's accurate or what grade of crude oil it is. That makes a huge difference.

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. 24 billion gallons is about 570 million barrels.

USGS estimates for the resources in the Bakken oil shale formation indicate that that's probably in the ballpark. But here's the thing: it's oil shale, not conventional crude oil. It's expensive to produce, it requires a lot of energy and water to extract, it's a very polluting process, the shale is strip-mined and heated to release the hydrocarbons, it's more or less a similar process to Canadian tar sands. So environmentally it's not the best thing to be doing, and since it's quite expensive to produce if Newt is counting on oil shale to deliver gasoline at two bucks a gallon he's delusional or stupid (or counting on the ignorance of the average voter)..I've seen estimates that the floor oil price for tar sands/shale oil production to be profitable is in the $75 a barrel range.

[TransitJohn]

14. You're wrong, it's not oil shale, it's shale oil.

Very big difference. You're describing oil shale. I've done my share of work on the Bakken (both Bakken and Three Forks wells), and it's conventional directional drilling.

[elleng]

4. For frakkers:

An April 2008 USGS report estimated the amount of technically recoverable oil using technology readily available at the end of 2007 within the Bakken Formation at 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels (680,000,000 m3), with a mean of 3.65 billion.[5] The state of North Dakota also released a report that month which estimated that there are 2.1 billion barrels (330,000,000 m3) of technically recoverable oil in the Bakken.[6] Various other estimates place the total reserves, recoverable and non-recoverable with today's technology, at up to 24 billion barrels. The most recent estimate places the figure at 18 billion barrels.[7]

New rock fracturing technology available starting in 2008 has caused a recent boom in Bakken production. By the end of 2010 oil production rates had reached 458,000 barrels (72,800 m3) per day outstripping the capacity to ship oil out of the Bakken.[8][9] The production technology gain has led a veteran industry insider to declare the USGS estimates are too low.[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_formation

[Historic NY]

5. All you got to do is get it out of the ground..........

and it isn't easy or they would have done it already.

[bhikkhu]

6. Perhaps, if gas sticks around $5 a gallon

Shale oil is pretty abundant, but the reason most of it has never been produced is that its very difficult and expensive to get the oil out of the shale. The Bakken formation is one of the better ones as far as that goes, as drilling technology has developed, but it will always be inherently expensive.

[piratefish08]

7. what reason will we use to go to war with this North Dakota to get the oil?

[xchrom]

9. We need a reason? Nt

[piratefish08]

12. good point. i think we could kick ND's ass pretty easily.......

USA USA!

[hobbit709]

13. ND is a nuclear power

They got all those ICBMs there.

[sharp_stick]

15. Sure but if you're right on their doorstep

ie" attack from Minnesota and South Dakota they'd have to fire the damned things straight up. As soon as they launch you RUNAWAY as fast as you can, come back in about 1000 years and it's all yours.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

16. We'd have to get a complete victory by October

Remember the Russian winters experienced by Hitler's troops, and Napoleon's troops before that?

There's a REASON that North Dakota is uninhabited.

[TheKentuckian]

8. If it is gallons we're talking maybe a month's worth of oil for the US.

If he is saying barrels then it sounds dubious or it must be damn tough to get to or sits on an extremely sensitive area for any number of reasons and probably several considering where we are talking about.

[Angleae]

10. 18 billion barrels in the Bakken formation alone by the most recent estimate.

per wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation

[highplainsdem]

11. 24 billion barrels from the Bakken in ND and Montana is the estimate of the tycoon who heads

Continental Resources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/06/27/tycoon-says-north-dakota-oil-field-will-yield-24-billion-barrels-among-worlds-biggest/

That article, published last summer, said the USGS hadn't confirmed that estimate:

Could Hamm be right about the Bakkenʼs barrels? The USGS canʼt comment; though its geologists met with Hamm and other Bakken operators recently, they wonʼt be done with a reassessment for two years. Wood Mackenzie, the respected global compiler of oil and gas data, says its latest estimates on Bakken reserves are more like 9 billion barrels. The North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, citing recent work done by its state geologists, figures the North Dakota portion of the basin has 11 billion recoverable barrels–up from the 2 billion the department estimated in 2008.