Interesting guess that ND is at the end of supply chain/pipelines. Thought I would point out for the benefit of TOD readers, especially US readers, that ND, Montana etc... are more or less at the start of the big Cdn pipelines not so much at the end of the old gulf/SE lines.

The amazing thing about this, though, is that our Cdn lines do not actually serve our own industrial heartland in the east. All the Alta lines go into the US, mainly toward Chicago or over the mountains to the Pacific coast. We import almost all our oil in the East in tankers, plus a little Cdn offshore production.

Companies are actually starting to reverse some of the old gulf/WT lines to get "dilbit" synthetic crude to the hubs.
That leaves Eastern Canada with no SPR (yes, zero) and no local onshore production if you exclude Petrolia in Southern Ontario where the first wells were dug around 1850, before Titusville.

My GGGGrandfather is buried there (Oliver Simmons). His tombstone dated +/-1880 identifies him as a petroleum engineer. He was into refining/fractionating with Imperial. Needless to say, we're past our peak! We store vast gas there now in shallow dolomitized pinnacle reefs.

I missed the attribution at the top, and only saw Gail's name. Good work, Piccolo.

Gail,

Thanks for following up on this and thanks Piccolo for delving in. It will be good to look harder once the USGS report is available, but I'm pretty pleased so far that this does not look like a huge amount of carbon. Nor does it look like it will bring down the price of oil. I still worry that the natural gas will be wasted on tarsands though. Perhaps the royalty income will spur some alternative energy development at the state level, which would be a positive development.

Chris

This only includes the Bakken in the US. The Bakken is a subset of all the production in the Williston Basin, but it's the hottest play going at the moment in the Williston. It would not be difficult to do the same exercise for the Williston, but we'll leave that for another day.