Anyone listening to Ed Schultz today. Going on about a new oil discovery?

[madinmaryland]

:wtf:

Talking about drilling our way to energy independence. I only heard about 15 minutes, so I missed what exactly he was referring to.

[NightWatcher]

1. per Big Head, they found a huge oil reserve up there in ND

I wonder how much if any of it lies under Native People's land?

[Parche]

2. I Heard Delaware Has Tons Of Oil

A brazillion barrels at least.........:woohoo: :woohoo:
:hi:

[madinmaryland]

19. That would be New Jersey!!

Delaware has only a toll-booths full of oil!!1!!

:hi:

[liberal1973]

3. This guy is not a Democrat

[nichomachus]

4. A lot depends

on where it is and what it will cost to drill it. Some oil is very expensive to drill. There is actually a lot more oil around the world --and in the US -- than some people think. However, the cost of extracting and processing it is extremely high.

[coriolis]

8. I imagine he's talking about the Bakken Shale oil in that area.

There is a lot of disagreement on how much oil is there and also on how much can be produced economically and/or
energy efficiently. Some oil deposits require more energy to recover than they will yield.

Here's a little info I found
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24057222/

[hatrack]

5. Ed Schultz is full of shit

Yeah, there might be hundreds of billions of barrels of oil under North Dakota. Sure, and about 1% MIGHT be recoverable with current technology, and it's going to be like trying to suck a milkshake through concrete, given the nature of the rock formation up there.

It's a series of very deep, relatively small oil fields that will be extremely expensive to develop, especially with the industry stretched as it already is in terms of rigs, crews and geologists.

But don't take my word for it. Here's a short version from the North Dakota Petroleum Council:

- The Wilson M. Laird Core and Sample Library in Grand Forks, North Dakota contains 6,119 feet of Bakken cores from oil and gas wells.

- Reserve studies estimate 250 billion barrels of oil in the North Dakota Bakken. However, current technology allows that we
could only produce about 1% of those reserves.

- In 2006, there were 46 new horizontal Bakken wells drilled.

- It cost nearly $6 million to complete a Bakken well in 2006 compared to $1.3 million in 2004.

- All Bakken wells in North Dakota since October of 2005 have been horizontal wells. Statewide horizontal drilling accounted for
72% of all new wells drilled and 55% of the state’s total oil production in 2005.

- The typical North Dakota Bakken well is 10,000 feet deep and has one to three horizontal legs extending out as far as 9,000
feet across two sections of minerals.

North Dakota Bakken – Geology at it’s Best and Worst!


http://www.ndoil.org/images/stories/PDFs/2ndnewsletter.pdf

[Ganja Ninja]

12. The reason this is in the news today is because of a ...

new assessment the USGS came out with today. They've increased the estimated reserves over 25 times the previous estimates.

[hatrack]

16. The USGS also guessed that world production will rise through 2026 - 2047, depending on ext. rate

And the main emphasis of my "full of shit" remark above was going to Schultz's insistence on "energy independence", which, barring a sudden and truly enormous expansion in the number of Old Order Amish living in America, is not going to happen.

We imported 28% of our oil in 1973, we import about 63 - 64% of our oil now, so what in the world are 2 or 3 (or even 7 or 8) billion barrels of expensive, difficult-to-develop reserves recovered over a period of many years going to do that THAT particular equation?

Very, very little.

[dysfunctional press]

27. world output of petrleum has been dropping since 2005...

but the usgs now reports on "liquids" rather than petroleum...and "liquids" include biofuels and processed oil shale/sands/tar.

[madokie]

6. would he have been talking about the oil thats found in the shale rocks up there maybe

In my judgement what we really need is some government mandated 40, 50 or 60 mpg ratings. one of our friends went to work for a company that was doing some work about an hour and a half of driving away so he bought a little ford fiesta, fistiva or something like that and he swore he was getting better than 60 mpg and this was back in the early '80s or so. Strait road and all hiway driving but decent mileage though.

[Ganja Ninja]

7. They've found 4.3 billion barrels in the Bakken Shales.

It's 2 miles down but they say it would cost about $50 per barrel to recover.

I'm sure "conservatives" will want to piss it away as fast as humanly possible. Funny how "conservatives" have trouble understanding the concept of conservation.

[SoCalDem]

10. Shale oil "recovery" is also an environmental NIGHTMARE

It's been talked about for decades, but only as a last resort..

[Ganja Ninja]

13. Apparently this doesn't involve mining the shale just drilling. n/t

[taught_me_patience]

9. Oh god... is he talking about oil shale?

This oil shale myth just won't die.

[Subdivisions]

14. Yup. Oil shale is our savior. n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

11. I can't listen to him because his voice reminds me of Limpballs.

:shrug: And we can't drill our way to energy independence. I think Sen Kerry said that and it is true!

[Mugu]

15. USGS Assesses Bakken Formation to Hold 3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil;

25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate

North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation of the Williston Basin, according to a just-released assessment by the US Geological Survey (USGS). This latest assessment shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency’s 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.

The assessment also identified 1.85 trillion cubic feet of associated/dissolved natural gas, and 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids.

New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger technically recoverable oil volumes. About 105 million barrels of oil were produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007.

Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000.


Map showing Williston Basin Province boundary (in red), Bakken-Lodgepole Total Petroleum System (TPS) (in blue), and major structural features in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Complete article at:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/04/usgs-assesses-b.html#more

[hatrack]

17. Yes, and Ghawar in SA has an EUR of about 85 - 87 billion barrels . . .

Even Prudhoe had about 13 billion. So, it's a third to a quarter the size of Prudhoe Bay, but it's going to save our collective bacon according to Big Ed.

Sorry, not buying it.

[madinmaryland]

18. What shocked me about it other than his comment about nationalizing

the oil companies, was that he was approaching it from a oil-man point of view.

Until this country begins a strong program of conservation of natural resources, we will NEVER become energy independent. None of these "stop-gap" solutions will work (drilling, ethanol, etc.)

[Warren DeMontague]

20. This sort of thing reminds me of a crack addict who finds a crack rock in the couch cushion.

"All RIGHT! Crack Problem Solved!"

:crazy:

[NNN0LHI]

24. Usually it just turns out to be a piece of lint

[eleny]

21. We went through an oil shale "boom" here in Colorado

And it may be happening again. It leaves areas in such a sad state.

Drilling our way to oil independence? Bah.

[madrchsod]

22. from his show--we are filling our reserves with 100+ dpb oil

yup...buy high and keep buying high to run up the price, 93% full-highest reserve in years...

follow the money...follow the money

[Paulie]

23. Yep, caught the same amount

and thought to myself that here's someone who doesn't know crap spouting off.

This was covered very well in Salon's How the World Works column:

North Dakota -- not quite ready for OPEC prime time

The United States Geological Survey announced on Thursday that there may be 3.0-4.3 billion barrels of "undiscovered, technically recoverable oil" in the Bakken shale formation, discussed briefly here at How the World Works yesterday. The USGS said it was the largest "continuous oil accumulation" it had ever assessed. For comparison purposes, the Alberta oil sands are thought to have 175 billion to 300 billion barrels of recoverable oil, and Saudi Arabia claims upward of 260 billion. So while 4.3 billion might seem like a big number, it's not quite the big leagues.

According to the USGS press release announcing the results of the assessment, "a 'continuous' oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences."

Translation: technically recoverable, but it ain't gonna be easy. Here's how the Associated Press characterized the task ahead:

About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface. Companies use pressurized fluid and sand to break pores in the rock and prop them open to recover the oil ...

Oil companies began sharing technology about two years ago on how to recover the oil. The technology involves drilling vertically to about 10,000 feet, then "kicking out" for as many feet horizontally, while fracturing the rock to release the oil trapped in microscopic pores in the area known as the "middle" Bakken.

This process, known as "horizontal drilling" may not involve the same kind of wholesale rock pulverization usually associated with shale oil recovery, but it still sounds like a hugely energy-intensive, expensive mess.

-- Andrew Leonard

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/04/10/bakken_formation/index.html

[orleans]

25. he was also talking about a gasoline addititve--he talked to the

guy who is part of whatever company (they used to advertise on his show and apparently they decided to go "international")

i kinda wonder about that stuff. don't remember the name of it.

[madinmaryland]

26. CA40. Stuff is supposed to improve your gas mileage.

I have no idea if it does or not, but if it does, the amount you pay for the stuff would wipe out any savings by the claimed increase in mpg.

:shrug: