Dakota Oil Fields of Saudi-Sized Reserves Make Farmers Drillers

[jpak]

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

John Bartelson, who smokes Marlboro Lights through fingers blackened with tractor grease, may look like an average wheat farmer. He isn't. He's one of North Dakota's new oil barons.

<snip>

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.

The USGS said in April that the Bakken holds as much as 4.3 billion barrels that can be recovered using today's engineering techniques. That's a fraction of the oil that Price said should be there, but it's still the largest accumulation of crude in the 48 contiguous U.S. states. North Dakota, where Bakken exploration is most intense now, won't become Saudi Arabia unless technology improves.

<more>

[NeoGreen]

1. Start with skepticism...

Found this after a google search...

"Bakken Formation Reserve Estimates Julie LeFever and Lynn Helms
Executive Summary Nature of the Controversy

All researchers agree that the Bakken Formation is a tremendous source rock. The controversy lies with how much oil has been generated, what other formations it may have sourced, and how much is ultimately recoverable. Early research on the Bakken started with a 1974 landmark paper by Wallace Dow, a UND Geology graduate, that addressed the oil generation capacity of the Bakken shale. Since that time, several additional papers have re-evaluated the Bakken, each bringing its own controversy over how much oil the Bakken is capable of generating and more importantly, how much of that oil can be economically produced.
The current controversy involves a paper by the late Dr. Leigh Price formerly of the United States Geological Survey in Denver, Colorado. He was an innovative thinker that challenged many of the traditional viewpoints of petroleum geochemistry. After an extensive oil sampling program by the North Dakota Geological Survey showed oil from the Bakken is compositionally distinct, further work, additional analyses, and many discussions with Dr. Price resulted in the controversial paper under review.
The methods used by Price to determine the amount of hydrocarbons generated by the Bakken and the idea that the oil has not migrated out of the Bakken are under dispute."

https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/Bakken/newpostings/07272006_BakkenReserveEstimates.pdf

As a hydrogeologist who has conducted pump tests on near surface "blast fractured" dolomite to enhance the recovery of "non-aqueous phase liquids", I would suggest that we wait for the data from the field and sober analysis before we celebrate the "technically recoverable" as in the play.

Granted, my experience is nothing compared to drilling down 2 miles to recover petroleum, but I think my experience in living the difference between pre-project expectations and post-project realization is applicable.

[jpak]

2. Dolomite is a bad muthafucka

:evilgrin:

[newfie11]

5. I thought dolomite was a calcium deposit

There are dolomite tablets sold for calcium?

[Ganja Ninja]

6. Dolomite kind of falls between limestone and marble.

Limestone being less dense and hard and Marble being denser and harder.

[jpak]

7. It'a also an epic urban rap poem from the '70's

n/t

[Viking12]

8. -.-

[DainBramaged]

3. It's a good thing

[Nihil]

9. In what sense?

For a start, read where the "oil" is
> 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.

You've got this undulating layer of hard retentive rock that averages
22' thick under a large part of the state and it's planted 2 miles below
the surface. This is a major difference to both the "real" oilfield
reservoirs (often fairly soft sandstone a way underground that can be
'tapped' for the contents) or the other tar shales (still softer than
dolomite but usually exploited in large open-cast pits).

And even if they manage this, what's the potential win?

> The USGS said in April that the Bakken holds as much as 4.3 billion
> barrels that can be recovered using today's engineering techniques.

Not quite Saudi standards after all is it?

Now start working out how much energy, water and money will have to be
expended to extract this "new Saudi" under your feet. Then, just for
good measure, have a look at what oil shale exploitation has done for
Alberta's environment.

When you've done this, I suspect you will understand why I asked the
question "In what sense is this a good thing?" ...

[newfie11]

4. I hope all the farmers own 100% of the mineral rights on their land

When we bought this farm in 2005 we looked at many places in both Wyoming and Nebraska. This was the only place that the owner still owned all the mineral rights. Of course it had been in the same family for over 60 years. Having seen what Peabody coal did to West Virginia farms we wanted to be sure we owned everything about this land. I still remember seeing a home with a huge strip mine surrounding it. All that was left was a tiny yard.

[Strelnikov_]

10. Oil Drum writeup on Bakken

Easy oil it ain't.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3868

Conclusions

1. The Bakken shale has produced about 111 million barrels of oil during the last 50+ years in Montana and North Dakota.

2. Total Bakken production is still rising, and producing at the rate of 75,000 BOPD in October 2007.

3. Because of the highly variable nature of shale reservoirs, the characteristics of the historical Bakken production, and the fact that per-well rates seem to have peaked, it seems unlikely that total Bakken production will exceed 2x to 3x current rate of 75,000 BOPD.

. . .


0.225 M bbl/dy peak rate. We're saved.