Huge Oil Field Discovered In U.S. - How Long Before Democrats Shut It Down?
Posted on April 11, 2008
Filed Under Muse, News |
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has identified that an area in North Dakota and Montana, known as the “Bakken Formation”, has an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil.
This new estimate is 25-fold increase from an earlier USGS estimate in 1995 which pegged the amount of recoverable oil at 151 million barrels.
What Does “Technically Recoverable Oil” Mean?
“Technically Recoverable Oil” is that oil which is estimated to be extracted using current technology and current Oil industry practices.
Simply put, what would’ve been oil left in the ground by drilling companies 30, 20 an even 10 years ago is now able to be extracted and refined for our use.
What Does This Mean For You?
The find is HUGE!
The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest “continuous” oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A “continuous” oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest “continuous” oil accumulation in the U.S. is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1.0 billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil.
While it will not get us to Energy Independence anytime soon, it can have a significant effect at the pump if we would only allow new refineries to be established (none have been built in decades).
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D - ND) had this to say;
“It is clear that the Bakken formation contains a significant amount of oil - the question is how much of that oil is recoverable using today’s technology?” said Senator Byron Dorgan, of North Dakota. “To get an answer to this important question, I requested that the U.S. Geological Survey complete this study, which will provide an up-to-date estimate on the amount of technically recoverable oil resources in the Bakken Shale formation.”
Thai’s Take?
As I said, this is a huge development in domestic oil production. Right now, our technology is at a point where we estimate we can get up to 4.3 Billion barrels out of this field. In the ensuing years, look for that figure to be revised upward as our technology improves.
However, despite Sen. Dorgan’s statements, look for his party (democrats) to demonize the oil exploration in this area like they have demonized ANWR exploration efforts. Suddenly you will see pictures of a meadow and animals playing in it, even though the picture has nothing to do with the actual area that will be explored. Look for them to also continue to block any effort to build new refineries.
It is ironic how they, on one hand, criticize the oil companies for making record profits (and ignore how much they pay in taxes) and on the other hand, take positions opposing any effort to actually increase the availability of petroleum products( heating oil, gasoline, kerosene, etc…) to the consumer.
- Thai
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5 Responses to “Huge Oil Field Discovered In U.S. - How Long Before Democrats Shut It Down?”
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Honestly, whats worse? Democrats trying to block an oilfield in a wildlife area or Republicans getting us in bed with Arab countries and turning the other way on terrorism funding because they think we are getting a discount on oil?
Whats worse? Democrats causing the price of oil to go up because they block drilling in a wildlife area or Republicans engaging in a war that disrupts supply and demand and causing instability in markets causing the price of oil to go up. Not to mention the war was complete avoidable.
Not saying that democrats aren’t wrong. Just that there is a lot of blame to go around. I suggest you look down the other side of the aisle before you go blindly blaming one side.
I suggest reading Sleeping with the Devil by Bob Baer. Great insight into the relationship with the United States and Saudi Arabi.
Independent - Thank you for your comments and welcome! You are right to ask the question. You asked the question of what is worse?
I would say the dems suddenly finding an area that could provide us with a huge amount of oil to be “off limits” would be worse. If we would explore and develop our own oil production we’d have less of a reason to have to “look the other way” when it comes to Saudi Arabia.
As for the “war”. Wars always cause disruptions in supplies. Remember though, we didn’t choose to be at war. Iraq is but one theatre in the War on Terror much like Europe, the Pacific and North Africa were theatres of war in WWII. This war, we would do well to remember, is one in which our opponent considers Iraq, the Middle East and pretty much the entire globe to be “fronts” on the battlefield. So I wouldn’t necessarily call it entirely “unavoidable”.
But that is also for another post that I will have soon.
-Thai
Thank you.
How did Iraq threaten the United States to cause us to go there under the guise of the “war on terror”? Being an ardent and passionate supporter of democracy, I am not defending the regime of Saddam Hussein, but if the Bush administration would have been prudent they would have known that invading Iraq under definitive circumstances would have been devastating with long term ramifications. The rhetoric leading up to the March 2003 invasion changed from about Iraq working with Al Qaeda and having weapons of mass destruction to Hussein being an evil dictator who oppresses his people and America freeing them. This was because the administration knew it had nothing to substantiate a preemptive invasion. This fact has been exhaustively researched and found to be factually accurate. And not just in now in hindsight. These facts were known before hand. But the administration had to save face. They threw down the gauntlet already and couldn’t back down now. Bush and his ideological advisors purposely put in false information in his 2003 State of the Union address regarding Iraq’s attempts to acquire nuclear technology because he needed something to sell the war to the American people. And nothing sells war like fear.
Lots of countries suffer from oppressive dictators much worse than Saddam Hussein (Korea, various African nations). Why don’t we free them? Because those counties have nothing to serve our self-interest. But Iraq most certainly does. Can you say “oil”? And that’s the bottom line.
Independent - thanks again for your comments. I’ll take them in turn.
-1. How did Iraq threaten the United States to cause us to go there under the guise of the “war on terror”? -
Why did we send our troops to Europe and North Africa in the 1940’s when Japan was the one who attacked us at Pearl Harbor??
Going to your point… Iraq already had ties to terrorists. Iraq had already proven to be a menace to its neighbors. Iraq had already proven that it had WMD program and would ramp it back up once the inspectors left and the sanctions were lifted (which is what Germany, France and Russia were trying to do - lift the sanctions). Documents obtained after the fall of Saddam have proven the above statements to be correct. I’ll go into more detail in the months ahead so stick around. Suffice to say, we were lucky to have gotten in when we did considering the damage his WMD program, when properly ramped up, would’ve done given the ralities of a post 9/11 world.
-2. The rhetoric leading up to the March 2003 invasion changed from about Iraq working with Al Qaeda and having weapons of mass destruction to Hussein being an evil dictator who oppresses his people and America freeing them. –
Actually it didn’t change. The rhetoric was the same. The part about him oppressing his people and menacing his neighbors was always one of the reasons for war. Read the congressional mandate which authorized him to go to war and you’ll see I’m right. Remember that Iraq was ina state of cease-fire since 1991. Iraq had to prove it had disarmed. It did not, so we went in and made sure they had. Also - what people forget is that Iraq already had processed some Uranium (some 5 tons out of the 500tons of uranium that we discovered). Doubt me? Think its from some right-wing biased site? Try the NYTimes where it was first reported in May, 2004. OR try here;
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040522/news_1n22uranium.html
or here;
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/2/220331.shtml
or here;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3009082.stm
That uranium my friend, would’ve been used had the sanctions been lifted as most assuredly the IAEA would’ve been kicked out yet again.
-3. This was because the administration knew it had nothing to substantiate a preemptive invasion. This fact has been exhaustively researched and found to be factually accurate. And not just in now in hindsight. These facts were known before hand. But the administration had to save face. They threw down the gauntlet already and couldn’t back down now. 9. Bush and his ideological advisors purposely put in false information in his 2003 State of the Union address regarding Iraq’s attempts to acquire nuclear technology because he needed something to sell the war to the American people. And nothing sells war like fear. —
This is factually inaccurate my friend. This “state of the union” mantra of yours has been refuted over and over again regarding the “yellowcake” uranium Iraq was pursuing. Joe Wilson was proven to be a liar. I will actually be doing a post in the not so distant future on this very subject so please stick around.
-4. Lots of countries suffer from oppressive dictators much worse than Saddam Hussein (Korea, various African nations). Why don’t we free them? Because those counties have nothing to serve our self-interest. But Iraq most certainly does. Can you say “oil”? And that’s the bottom line. —
I’m afraid we’ll mainly have to disagree here. We do agree that countries do things in their own interest. Ours is no different. But we also do things in other countries’ interests too. As for “war for oil”, point to me one drop where we have confiscated the resource from Iraq and I’ll agree with you. We have not. We have liberated two Middle Eastern countries that are awash with oil (Kuwait, Iraq) and not once did we seize the oil. So I’m afraid we’re again going to disagree. Might I be so bold as to provide a suggestion? If you’re so worked up about the alleged “war for oil” then might I suggest that you stop driving and stop using the oil that we allegedly “took”?
A cheeky statement I realize. But just trying to prove a point that the free flow of oil is not necessarily a bad thing. I personally would wish we’d get off of oil. Bu that ain’t gonna happen in the near future. So in the meantime, I’m all for developing our domestic sources of oil and building more refineries to bring the price down. Remember, even with the war going on, its our lack of refining capacity and the multiple “flavors” of gasoline that are required by different states and regions at different parts of the year that is driving the price at the pump.
Thanks for the lively discussion!
the democrats are refusing to protect oil production in the u.s. because they sold out the america way of life to their socialists friends in this country. the democrats are socialists and always will be… they are trying to bring this country by using the most liberal democrat in the country barack obama to lead their party. look at the makeup of their party: unions..actors… mexican… blacks ….gang members are all supporters of that party and soon we will have more killings in the streets of every big cty as gas prices reach 5$ a gallon ….I hope OBAMA is elected… goodbye jobs. When you see the people that can’t afford to buy gas they will steal it to keep their jobs . vote for obama and see what happens to this country…. god bless this poor country