DrumBeat: March 18, 2008
Posted by Leanan on March 18, 2008 - 9:05am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Swiss reject US, Jewish criticism of Iranian gas deal
BERN, Switzerland: Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey on Tuesday brushed aside U.S. and Jewish criticism of a multibillion-dollar (-euro) gas deal she helped clinch with Iran, saying the Alpine republic does not need permission from the United States to advance its strategic interests.The brusque remarks by Calmy-Rey, who has ruffled feathers in Washington and Jerusalem with her outspoken positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, threaten to escalate tensions over a 25-year natural gas contract announced Monday between Swiss energy trading company EGL and the state-owned National Iranian Gas Export Company.
Persian Gulf Tanker Rates Post Biggest Increase in Six Weeks
(Bloomberg) -- The cost of shipping Middle East crude to Asia rose the most in more than six weeks amid tanker bookings by Chevron Corp. and ENI SpA.
Nigerian oil union postpones strike plans
LAGOS (Reuters) - A Nigerian oil workers' union said on Tuesday it was in talks with the government over a labour dispute at the local arm of ExxonMobil and any strike action had been put back until next week.
LUKOIL to supply no oil to Germany in April
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's LUKOIL will supply no crude to Germany in April for a third month in a row as it steps up pressure on the importer of Russian oil to the country to get better prices, trading sources said on Tuesday."There will be most likely nothing for April, and going forward, talks will be held on a monthly basis," one source told Reuters.
Tapping US heatoil reserve would lower prices-EIA
WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) - Releasing supplies from the U.S. Northeast Heating Oil Reserve would have a short-term impact on lowering record retail heating oil prices, the head of the federal Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday.
Shell may upgrade crude outside Alberta
CALGARY -- Royal Dutch Shell PLC is considering several upgrading options for its crude from Alberta's oilsands, including sending it to Ontario, the U.S. Gulf Coast or California.The strategy could upset the Alberta government, which wants more oilsands upgrading to be done in the province, but Rob Routs, in charge of the European oil major's refining business, said one of the reasons Shell took out Shell Canada Ltd.'s minority shareholders for $8.7-billion last year was to optimize its infrastructure in North America.
Russia's Stroytransgaz to build 2nd gas refinery in Syria by 2010
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) - Stroytransgaz, one of Russia's largest engineering and construction companies, said on Tuesday it plans to build a second gas refinery in north-central Syria by 2010.
NZ can grow all its own biofuels, says study
Purpose-grown forests to produce biofuels could meet all New Zealand's transport fuel requirements within 40 years, according to a study by the Crown research institute Scion.
Portugal leads rush into green energy
Portugal, one of the European Union's least conspicuous countries, is in the vanguard of the continent's rush to harness renewable energy. Despite its frail economy, it is one of eight EU countries whose push into clean technology has enabled a double-digit share of electricity consumption from green sources.
A gloomy forecast about the future of the oil industry — looking forward to a possible Doomsday within a very few years — was given to the Sub-Saharan oil, gas and petrochemical conference in Cape Town on Tuesday.Chris Skrebowski, a researcher for the Energy Institute in Britain, told delegates that the oil supply will peak in 2011 or 2012 at around 93 million barrels a day, that oil supply in international trade will peak earlier than the oil production peak, and he forecast: "There will be supply shortfalls in winter before peak."
Delta Air Lines to offer voluntary severances
ATLANTA - Delta Air Lines says it will offer voluntary severance payouts to roughly 30,000 employees — more than half its workforce — and cut domestic capacity by an extra 5 percent this year as part of an overhaul of its business plan to deal with soaring fuel prices.
Extra OPEC Oil Production Isn't Needed, Qatar Says
(Bloomberg) -- OPEC has no need to pump additional oil supplies to soften near-record prices, which are propped up by the weak U.S. dollar, Qatar's energy minister said.``We are confident there is no shortage of supply,'' Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said in a phone interview from Qatar today. ``One of the reasons that the oil price is going up is because of dollar weakness. Every time the dollar goes down, oil goes up.''
'We defeated Exxon,' Venezuelan oil minister says
CARACAS (Reuters) - A ruling in a British court to lift a $12 billion freeze on Venezuelan assets earlier awarded to U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil was a "100 pct victory" for the South American nation, its oil minister said Tuesday."We have defeated Exxon," minister Rafael Ramirez said on state television after Tuesday's decision.
China Selling Oil Equipment to Africa
China depends on Africa for roughly one-third of its imported oil. And, many Chinese companies also see Africa as a lucrative market to sell oil drilling equipment. Several Chinese firms are attending this year's oil industry convention, underway in South Africa.
Cheney says high oil price reflects market reality
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Crude oil prices in excess of $100 a barrel reflect the reality in the market place, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on Monday.Cheney, on a trip to the Middle East that started in Iraq, said he did not see a lot of excess production capacity worldwide.
Saudis grumble over economy despite record oil price
RIYADH, March 18 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is showing signs of nervousness about popular discontent over inflation, as Saudis suffer sharp price rises despite an unprecedented cash windfall from high oil prices, observers say.Saudis saw price rises hit 7 percent in January, the highest since at least 1981, while the riyal has declined in the past year along with the U.S. dollar to which it is tightly pegged.
Michael C. Lynch: Peak oil, uncommon ground
Steve Andrews was kind enough to approach me about writing on the subject of where the peak oil community agrees with, shall we say, its critics. However, the peak oil community is itself divided in its views and cannot be addressed as a unified whole. So, this piece will include what I consider the areas of disagreement between the two communities of peak oil advocates, and the subsequent areas of agreement between resource optimists and peak oil advocates of both kinds.
Venezuela Aims To Increase 2008 Oil Output From Old Fields
Venezuela's Oil Ministry plans to focus this year on pumping more crude from the country's western region, an area known for its mature oil wells.The ministry will open more wells and use more drill equipment in these areas so that "in 2008, production can reach an average of 937,000 barrels a day," up from 907,000 in 2007, according to the ministry's plans outlined in its 2007 year-end report, obtained by Dow Jones Newswires.
Coal Reemerges As Important Raw Material In Chemical Manufacturing Industry, Experts Argue
With oil prices hovering around $100 per barrel, coal is reemerging as a key raw material in the manufacture of the basic chemical materials used to make plastics, fertilizers, and hundreds of other products, according to an article scheduled for the March 17 issue of Chemical & Engineering News.
Dewa’s electricity demand is growing at 15-20 per cent, while water demand is increasing at 12 per cent every year. Amid Dubai’s massive growth fuelled by its ambitious projects, the question of whether the emirate can sustain the growing power consumption has been raised by some property developers, saying Dubai’s $300 billion real estate boom may be slowed as the emirate’s state-owned power and water utility struggles to keep up with demand from residential and tourism projects.
China's energy crunch a chance for power play
Chinese authorities are also aggressively pursuing alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power, and attempting to supply the growing global alternative energy market. More than 20 plants have been built to produce polysilicon - a vital ingredient for solar panels. But polysilicon is extremely hazardous and a recent news report on China's refusal to install costly protective technology caused a selloff in publicly traded solar power companies such as SunTech Power, China Sunergy and Markham, Ont.-based Canadian Solar.Mr. Brebner holds out little hope for alternative energy as a short-term solution. "The magnitude requirements for energy within China are so vast I think it's not really going to make a difference over the next five to 10 years" he says.
One of the more interesting side notes in crude’s run-up to its current exorbitant levels is the extent to which the market has been influenced by incidents in countries that, in previous years, wouldn’t have possibly affected the global oil futures price.One of those countries is Chad, which suffered an attempted coup last month and where a rebel leader Sunday threatened to attack the country’s oil fields, which are operated by a consortium led by Exxon Mobil.
Oil Price Making Some Africans Richer, Others Poorer
High oil prices are creating the best of times and worst of times for Africa. That is according to several experts speaking this week at an oil industry conference in South Africa. For the handful of countries that export oil, times are good. But times are tough for everyone else.
Indians pays for fuel-price imbroglio
MUMBAI - The Indian government's decision to raise the retail prices of petrol and diesel marginally by 2 rupees (5.5 US cents) and 1 rupee a liter in February, did little to untangle India's oil price imbroglio. The country's consumers have to pay prices that, even subsidized, are among the highest in Asia for the fuel yet oil companies nurse record losses that are put at US$88 million daily.
All About: Food and fossil fuels
(CNN) -- Eating ethically is no easy task these days. One problem is deciding which ethic is more important. Keeping third-world farmers in fair trade jobs by purchasing their produce? Or assuaging your concerns over the environmental impact of getting that produce to your kitchen by shopping locally instead?
Drought eases, water wars persist
"The Southeast has not yet come to grips with the fact that it has a water problem, that it needs to plan for its water usage, that it can't take for granted that all the water it needs will always be there," says Robin Craig, a law professor and water expert at Florida State University's College of Law.Bitter battles over water could thwart the Southeast's evolution as one of 10 "mega-regions" across the USA, says Harry West, a professor at Georgia Tech's Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development.
"We've got to get around the parochial way of thinking about things and understand that these issues don't stop at the state line," he says.
We are constantly warned by scientists that our planet is in big trouble, so why can't we change direction? David Suzuki, one of the world's leading ecologists, on how humans have lost the vital skill of foresight.
Stealth release of major federal study of Gulf Coast climate change transportation impacts
On March 12 the U.S. government released a major assessment report on the likely impacts of global climate disruption on a wide range of transportation systems and infrastructure in the U.S. Gulf Coast region. The report was released in a way that was clearly intended to minimize public attention to it, and our media sources say the Department of Transportation is blocking journalists from talking with the lead author at the agency about the findings in the report. Why? Read on....
Backyard answer to energy crisis
With crude oil now more than $US110 a barrel and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries announcing this month that it will not succumb to demands for raised production quotas, dark predictions of an imminent descent into a global energy crisis appear to be coming true.But the permaculture co-founder David Holmgren, who has been warning of such events for decades, believes the energy crisis heralds the beginning of a low-energy future - a future that may involve a return to 1950s suburbia.
Goldman Sachs Follows Money Morning Prediction That Oil Prices Could Approach $200 a Barrel
Just days after Money Morning Investment Director Keith Fitz-Gerald reiterated his prediction that oil prices would reach $187 a barrel within 36 months, Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) issued a report predicting crude oil prices would reach $175 in the next few years.
Inflation Is Baked Into the Cake
Instead, we look to longer-term trends. In that regard, two are apparent. The first has to do with the concept of “peak” commodities. While it has been Marion King Hubbert’s theory of Peak Oil that has received the most attention, credible arguments can also be made for peak metal (the dearth of major new discoveries), and even peak food. While these arguments have merit, they were beyond the scope of our survey, other than noting them as potentially rising in significance over time.
Markets around the Gulf are panicking because their dinars, riyals and dirhams are pegged to the flailing dollar. When the Fed meets to decide how much value to extract from the dollar, central banks in this region will administer a similar inflationary poison to their own currencies.So, what does this mean? Real term rates will surely dip further into the negative, inflation will continue to soar, nationals and expats will carry on complaining their bread has become more expensive, governments will dig further into their pockets to doll out extravagant welfare initiatives. In short, it will be business as usual.
Seoul to Scale Up State Oil Company
A state-run oil firm has set out to increase in size as part of efforts to help secure crucial energy sources in a more stable manner.According to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy Tuesday, President Lee Myung-bak told government officials the previous day that the Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) should be at least ``five times bigger’’ than its current size.
South American Natural Gas Crisis a Tragedy of Politics
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Few things better illustrate the tragedy of Latin American populist and nationalist politics than the crisis related to natural gas in South America. A region endowed with vast reserves and governments that describe themselves as close partners is mired in crippling power shortages and cross-border disputes over cutbacks in the supply of natural gas. People cannot count on consistent service.The problem began in 2002 when Argentine politicians decided to control the price of natural gas, large amounts of which had been discovered in the country during the previous two decades. In the context of an economic rebound, demand boomed. Natural gas became a crucial part of Argentina's energy mix -- the automobile industry here largely converted to it as a fuel source.
But because the controlled prices provided little incentive to foreign companies at a time when the government was leading an aggressive campaign against private capital, investment dried up. When supply was unable to meet demand, shortages followed. Argentina was forced to reduce contracted exports to Chile from 20 million cubic meters a day in 2003 to one-tenth of that today.
Indonesia ups April oil imports by 4.2 pct
SINGAPORE, March 18 (Reuters) - Indonesia's state oil company PT Pertamina will import a higher-than-expected 12.17 million barrels of oil products in April, due to a refinery glitch and higher utility demand, industry sources said on Tuesday....State electricity firm PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) has switched to using diesel-fired generators since February due to a shortage of domestic coal following recent disruptions to shipments that had triggered power blackouts in Java and Bali.
India Bans Exports of Edible Oils to Boost Supplies
(Bloomberg) -- India, the world's second-biggest buyer of vegetable oils, banned exports of all edible oils to boost local supplies amid concern a smaller winter oilseed crop may worsen a shortage.
NASA Chief: Global Warming Treated Like a Religion
The theory of human-caused global warming is being treated as religious dogma, NASA's administrator said.In an interview with SciGuy blogger Eric Berger, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin who last May questioned whether addressing the alleged global warming problem required all that much urgency, warned that dissent from the global warming theory is almost treated as heresy.
Ice scientists around the world watched with a mixture of alarm and astonishment as the great Arctic Sea ice sheet shrank over the northern summer to its lowest level in memory.The rapid melt exceeded almost every scenario the scientists had modelled. But as they crunched the numbers they found that since 1979 the summer sea ice has been dwindling by 10 per cent or 72,000 square kilometres each decade.
Complex natural forces have contributed to the record melt but the impact of global warming on the fragile polar ice sheet is inescapable.
Exxon loses decision in court battle with Venezuela
LONDON: A freeze on $12 billion in Venezuelan assets awarded to Exxon Mobil should be lifted, a British court ruled Tuesday.Exxon convinced a court in January to freeze the assets of the Venezuelan state oil company so cash would be available if it won arbitration over an oil field which was lost in President Hugo Chávez's nationalization drive.
But after hearing Petróleos de Venezuela's arguments, the judge ruled against Exxon.
Things are getting very weird very fast -- and will probably get even weirder, faster, as the train wreck of bad debt meets the Saint Paddy's Day Parade of bacchanalian excess at the grade-crossing of destiny. The train is carrying America's financial system, but the engine driving it is peak oil, because declining energy resources necessarily means declining capital wealth -- and declining value of all the institutions, instruments, and markers that denote that wealth or hope to profit by trading in it. The fiasco leads straight to the necessary reinvention of American life on other terms and by other means.
Global oil production likely to peak in 2011 - analyst
The point at which the world’s oil output would peak and production would enter a terminal decline might become a global reality as soon as 2011, an expert predicted on Tuesday.Peak oil, which referred to the point when no further production expansion would be possible, had become a contentious issue of debate in recent years with analysts predicting various dates and scenarios at when peak oil would be a reality.
Speaking at the Oil Africa conference in Cape Town Energy Institute researcher Chris Skrebowski said that while a debate on the issue continued to rage globally, the reality was that the world would soon begin to run out of oil reserves.
Shell counts rising cost of squeezing oil from sand in Canada
Shell’s Canadian oil sands business is suffering a profitability squeeze because of the soaring cost of energy needed to extract bitumen from sand.The oil company’s annual report, published yesterday, reveals that operating expenses at the Athabasca Oil Sands Project in Alberta have soared by almost 50 per cent in the two years since 2005, while output at the bitumen mining project has either remained static or declined.
The U.S. Is Poised to Hit a New Oil Gusher
Oil drillers have their eye on a vast oil field in and around North Dakota, which promises a steady flow of domestic crude for years.
Kuwaiti politics in crisis after cabinet resignation
Sectarian tensions and a row over public sector pay have prompted a political crisis in Kuwait, Opec's fourth-largest oil producing country.The Middle Eastern state saw its cabinet step down en masse yesterday, raising the likelihood of snap elections following the dissolution of parliament by head of state Sheikh Sabar.
Angelic children stare at rolling waves as a deep voice booms out the wonders of petroleum. "Mexico has a great treasure, a treasure hidden below the bottom of the sea," the narrator says soothingly above joyous music. "But the world now confronts a new reality." Suddenly, the watcher is bombarded with graphics explaining deep sea drilling in terms fifth graders might understand; the oil is at a depth 30 times greater than Mexico's highest building; the pressure is like 60 trucks weighing on a can of soda. As the music reaches a dramatic finale, the narrator hits the punch line as if in a preview for a blockbuster movie: "Reaching our oil is one of the biggest challenges of our time," he says. "And Mexico has to take the necessary actions to achieve it."
Gazprom may be asked to share export revenue
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's gas export monopoly Gazprom may be asked to share some of its export revenues with independent gas producers for using their gas for export needs, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
US oil spill ship pilot charged
The pilot of a ship that spilt 58,000 gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay after crashing into the Bay Bridge has been charged with criminal negligence.John Cota, who was also charged with breaking environmental laws, faces 18 months in jail and up to $100,000 in fines if convicted.
Climate Change Could Turn Ireland's Green To Brown
WASHINGTON - The wearin' of the brown?Forty shades of beige? - Climate change could turn Ireland's legendary emerald landscape a dusty tan, with profound effects on its society and culture, a new study released in time for St. Patrick's Day reported.
Monbiot: Carbon capture is turning out to be just another great green scam
Cleaner technology is possible, but Labour plans to introduce it so slowly that any benefits will be lost in higher coal output.
Re: Barnett Shale Play & Bakken Shale Play
After vast capital expenditures, the Barnett Shale Play has helped to basically stabilize total Texas natural gas production at about 60% of our 1972 peak production rate.
The Bakken is clearly a commercial play, but the key question is whether the producing intervals are commercially productive across a wide area, or only in discrete traps, and different recovery factor assumptions produce wildly different URR estimates.
In any case, IMO October, 2007 was the beginning of the real Energy Boom/Crisis. Whether it is perceived as boom or crisis is largely dependent on whether you are a net energy producer or net energy consumer.
I would be very cautious about assuming that the oil industry's ability to make money in resource plays and in finding overlooked oil fields will translate into good news for net energy consumers.
West-
I've been in Continental Resources since the IPO.
I believe their development costs in the Bakken are about $30/barrel. That is for the productive well.
It seems like no matter who I talk to-- you either have a cash lifting cost of $20 with a development cost of $20, or a cash lifting cost of $10 with a development cost of $30, but North American crude oil at its best is a $40/barrel cost product today.
And looking at Rexx Energy, their sum total lifting development and G&A cost is $50/barrel. They are an 80% Illinois Basin company.
FF
the nd industrial commission has a presentation on the middle bakken. the usgs has a study out as well:
http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/documents/2006/06035flannery/index.htm
and encore aquisition's 3-4-08 analyist presentation
http://www.encoreacq.com/
apparently there is a lot of wild speculation about the urr for the middle bakken. the kipplinger article quotes 100Gb.
wow! another ghawar right here in the missouri river badlands. dream on...............encore uses reserves of 300 kb/section, extrapolation implies an area of 333,333 - 640 acre sections.
encore uses an ip of 440bopd. the ip is the subject of wild speculation also.
Some peakoil.com threads:
Finally, the Bakken makes the national media (NY Times)
Peak oil: Do you want it to occur? (go in about 8 pages)
Flow rates will never reach very high, but it is good LSC. Will be a good long-term resource - perhaps for the military/government.
well, at least the nyt reports their wildly speculative 200 gb figure as oil in place. kipplenger's wildly speculative 100 gb is implied as recoverable.
they must be a shill for cera, note they are saying that the usgs final report, when it is published, will be "conservative". i have read that before in ceraspeak.
Wiki has an article about the Bakken:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation
I had read that Bakken was 400 billion barrels of oil in place. One might expect to recover 10-20% of that. Of course the play is in its early stages and as time goes on a clearer picture might develop.
The Barnett Shale in the Ft. Worth area is the largest remaining natural gas field in Texas. Devon is the largest acreage holder in the play and gave a resource estimate of 13 tcf in its portion. Devon expected peak production from its holdings there in 2009 at about 1 bcf/day. The United States used about 22 tcf per year. The horizontal wells cost millions of dollars a piece. The United States used about 22% of the world's natural gas per year. Check the Devon website for investor presentation (pdf) about their work there.
What a nice windfall for DFW. Too bad they can't fuel planes on NG and still have to buy Jet A.
The way the oil companies seem to be approching this is that the oil is distributed over a wide area. This seems to be based on research that shows that the formation is continuous. The research can be found here:
http://www.undeerc.org/Price/
Apparently this work will be published officially next month.
Chris
At some point, it would be good to find enough information on the Barnett Shale Play to put together a post on the topic, either as a guest post or as a post by one of the TOD staff.
We get little pieces here and there. There was some earlier discussion on one of my posts.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3531#comment-295841
Do we have folks with inside knowledge of the situation. Besides Jeffrey Brown, I know that "mdsolar" has posted on the topic, and now I see Fractional_Flow. What other folks know something about the topic?
Imagine the Bartlett, Arkoma, and Fayetteville Shale to the Reelfoot Rift/Mississippi Embayment as an
Arc surrounding and caused by the uplift of the Ouachita Mountain
Range, the only East West Range in the US.
The Barnett and Fayetteville being on either side of the shallow
Arkoma.
In Arkansas, the farther East you go, the deeper the play is. To know where the current plays are, follow the County Judge.
He must be told which roads will be used/destroyed to get the wells up and running.
Right now White and Van Buren are the big plays. A man (from an article on road taxes being taken out of royalty payments) said that the 2 lane road in front of his house has interstate 40 type traffic on it.
"I don't know what they're building up there, but it must be huge (Searcy,
White County, Chaesapeake Energy)."
"Ouachita Mountain
Range, the only East West Range in the US"
the granite range of wyoming is east-west also.
Gail,
I've only been following the news on this (Bakken oil). I'm not a geologist and so far as I can tell, the hold up with the USGS publishing the work that Leigh Price did is that they haven't felt qualified to assess it. What I know is that the estimate for oil in place is around 400 billion barrels of light sweet crude spread over a wide area. Development has been going on in Montana, North Dakota and Canada. The cost figure I've seen is that it is economic to extract at $60/barrel. The oil comes from shale, but is trapped in a layer of sandstone that is thin and broad. Horizontal drilling is used to access this layer which is sandwiched between two layers of shale. It sounds like now people are beginning to feel comfortable saying that 100 billion barrels could be extracted. That is about 13 years of US oil consumption. The formation also produces natural gas and one well produced "2,247 barrels of oil and 1.7 million cubic feet" of gas in a day recently. http://www.scandoil.com/moxie-bm2/by_province/americans_onshore/usa/whit...
So that is about 11% of the energy in gas. Wells have been flaring the gas but I think they all plan to capture it as soon as they can. If the gas fraction is typical then this comes to 75 trillion cubic feet of gas, about 3 years of US consumption. As I say, I'm not a geologist but I'd guess that the light stuff comes up first so that the gas fraction might decline with time.
EDIT: mixed up cubic feet and meters originally.
Chris
You may want to review the history of the Austin Chalk Play as a pretty good analogue to the Bakken Shale Play. I suggest you quiz the engineers up the thread about what they think about 100 Gb in URR for the Bakken.
In any case, can you provide some documentation for the following?
December 3, 2007
Billions of barrels of oil found in Eastern Montana
By JENNIFER McKEE
Gazette State Bureau
HELENA - The low point came when the things got so tight that Billings petroleum geologist Richard Findley flirted with the idea of taking a second job as a restaurant cook.
He was working out of his basement, looking for oil in an Eastern Montana field almost nobody else wanted. Then, in 1996, he and his partner accidentally stumbled across a porous layer of dolomite 9,000 feet below ground at a site just a little west and north of Sidney.
That serendipity turned out to be the largest on-shore oil discovery in the continental United States in better than 20 years. Today, the oil field Findley found - and the technology he helped develop to extract the oil - has made millionaires out of ordinary Montanans, has swollen state coffers and ushered in a new philosophy of oil prospecting worldwide...
The Williston Basin is a geologic formation beneath a good chunk of Eastern Montana, most of North Dakota, parts of South Dakota and the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Within the basin is something called the Bakken Formation. The Bakken (rhymes with "talking") is a sandwich of two slabs of black shale surrounding a layer of limestone, siltstone, sandstone and dolomite, another kind of sedimentary rock...
More:
http://billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/12/03/news/state/20-oil.txt
Thanks, but I'm looking for the documentation that the 100 Gb in URR are projected to come from a thin blanket sandstone.
Figure 1-10 here http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/documents/2006/06035flannery/index.htm describes the middle member.
Chris
From the linked article, regarding the middle siltstone interval:
One way of reading the link though is that the middle member is a trap itself. The USGS has been on again off again about saying anything about this. If they do next month, perhaps we'll have some reviewed work to look at.
Chris
Thanks. Assuming there is 100 billion barrels available (a big assumption), It will be interesting to see how much of it can be produced annually. We are currently using about 8 billion barrels a year. If it were possible to produce 4% of the 100 billion in a year, that would be half of our current use. At this point, it is probably too soon to even speculate.
We are talking about 2,247 barrels of oil a day from the one well. To get 4 billion barrels a year, we would need the equivalent of 4,877 wells producing at the rate of this one to get 10,958,904 barrels a day = 4 billion barrels a year.
This article appears to talk a bit about the Middle Bakken formation exploitation going on in Canada.
(emphasis mine)
Seems like they can't quite narrow it down well up here, either. But at least it makes specific reference to OOIP.
It should not come as much of a surprise to most of us here that it's not exactly a gusher...
Still, I'd like to have one of those on hand in, say, 10 years.
The article mentions a related oil shale play in neighbouring Manitoba, albeit very briefly.
I think that what people are doing is taking the Bakken Shale original oil in place (OOIP) estimates--hundreds of billions of barrels of oil--and then looking at discrete sandstone/shale producing fields and then extrapolating the discrete fields across the whole play.
The large estimates come from analysing the shale. The novel idea is that the oil has not migrated except to the middle member. This is based on interpolation of cores that North Dakota has accumulated. There is a summary of this here: https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/bakken/newpostings/07272006_BakkenReserveEst...
and other links here: https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/bakken/bakken.asp
In connection with Gail's suggestion, maybe the best thing to do would be to interview Julie LeFever of the North Dakota Geological Survey after compiling a list of skeptical questions. This could give a better idea about the uncertainties in the high estimates perhaps.
Chris
"Assuming there is 100 billion barrels available (a big assumption)"
assume the moon is made of white cheese and we will never run out, assume the earth is filled with a core of light sweet abiotic idiotic crude, assume anything you like.
Hi Westexas,
I'm just wondering if the capital expenditures on the Barnett were as vast as the natural gas reserves in South America, or as vast as the oil field in North Dakota?
In other words (are there any other words?), how vast is vast? Is vast vaster when we're talking of capital, gas or oil? Is it even possible to speak of units of vastness?
On a related subject, do train buffs buff trains? Can a buff ever be an advocate?
Something tells me you were having a little fun this morning, Jeffrey, buffing your post with a little journalese.
I'm wondering about this oil field in North Dakota. The article from today's drumbeat above says the field could contain up to 100 billion barrels. True, or is it just another fantasy from the abiotic oil crowd?
"this oil field in North Dakota"
it is not a single field, although that is probably what is implied by the likes of kipplinger. as wt points out, the middle bakken will likely produce on structural and stratigraphic traps. currently, most of the drilling is on the nesson "anticline" and the nesson extention(whatever that is).
"the field could contain up to 100 billion barrels"
again, kipplinger clearly implies that the recoverable oil is 100 gb, a ghawar field in the missouri river badlands, in other words.
give these cornucopians credit, if nothing else they are persistant.
One Ghawar, or 8 Prudhoe Bays (largest oil field in North America) or 17 East Texas Fields (largest oil field in the Lower 48).
The 100 Gb story is beginning to remind me of some of the guys pushing Pacific Ethanol stock not too long ago.
Let's nominate David Paterson for next week's Wings of Justice award, for becoming the nation's first openly serving, peak-oil-aware governor!
Buzzflash.com names a Wings of Justice award winner each week "to honor individuals who speak out and take action on behalf of the great American tradition of courage, Constitutional Rights, secular inclusion, truthfulness and common sense." The award winners are widely distributed; our local community radio station names the award winner and the justification each week.
As Glenn has posted, New York state's new governor, David Paterson, clearly understands peak oil and is willing to speak publicly about it.
Now that he is governor of New York, is David Paterson the only openly serving, peak oil aware governor in the US? I called around to people nationally active in peak oil education, and they weren’t aware that any other US governor had made comparable statements about peak oil. With their help, I identified the five states where much activity and discussion around peak oil made it likely that the governor had weighed in. Spokespeople for Wyoming governor Dave Freudenthal and Connecticut governor Jodi Rell said that those governors had not publicly addressed peak oil. The offices of Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and Montana governor Brian Schweitzer did not return my morning calls by the end of the day.
What about New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, whose recent campaign platform was the most ambitious of any presidential candidate’s in reducing use of fossil fuel? Tom Udall, co-chair of the US Congress’s Peak Oil Caucus, represents a New Mexico district, so Richardson must talk to him about peak oil, no? Well, apparently not. The only indirect comment I’ve seen from Richardson on peak oil is the note on his presidential campaign web site, when Tom Udall opened a New Hampshire campaign office, that Udall was co-chair of the peak oil caucus. Richardson’s New Mexico governor’s office did not return my morning phone call by the end of the day.
So it looks like there are probably other governors who discuss peak oil in the closet—I mean, in their cabinets, of course—but David Paterson is the first openly serving, peak oil aware governor in the country.
Let's nominate Paterson for next week's Wings of Justice Award, so that people outside our little community can learn how remarkable he is in this respect.
Paterson's stance on peak oil is the subject of my weekly radio commentary, the Peak Oil Check-In. Download it here.
The timing might not be right for this. Since news of his affair and questions about whether he used public funding to conduct it are all over the news today.
...not to mention the fact that the "great American tradition of courage, Constitutional Rights, secular inclusion, truthfulness and common sense" is just plain silly. Why not nominate him to be president of calendars while we're at it?
And besides that, I would like to see what it might take to have Patterson actually 'voice the words', now that he's 'IN the Big Chair'.
Campaign speeches are great, but can we, in the low-pressure luxury that we enjoy out here come up with some of the kind of language that would be palatable/possible for our like-minded, sitting officials to utter, without getting shuffled off to the Carter Sweater-Drawer? .. or perhaps to 'say the words', and have a follow-up prepared for when they DO try to relegate you to the UFO room? Make that part of your Red Badge of Courage, that you 'know' that this will be the response, and that 'Carter was right when he did it, but our fear, irrational-exuberance, and Prudhoe Bay brought out the stupid in us, and now we're another 30 years behind schedule'. Use the inevitable attack against the attackers, and make that punch overshoot.
Alright, business call coming in.. no time to bell the cat.
Bob
maybe we could find the right Saucy Democratic Rep to get videotaped having lap-dance from Oily Cassandra?