The Bakken Oil Field

Were I an American, I would sit on this oil and continue to use up the resources of the rest of the world until the prices were high enough to make this oil very very attractive. It must be realised that oil as a fuel is one thing, but just about every consumer product that we use is based on "hydrocarbons" at some stage. Imagine an America without "plastic".

Keep it for yourselves for later when the rest of the greedy oil rich nations are running dry.

Cool. Too bad we won't do anything with it.

We knew about this for many years and never took advantage of it because:

1) The tree huggers wouldn't let them drill here and there. I am a tree hugger to a certain extent but also understand the need to be rational and real.

2) We, politically, refused to do anything to make our middle eastern "friends'' cry. So what makes anyone think that we will make them unhappy now that we have a "sympathetic" president who seems more concerned about the troubles over there than our problems here in the US?

Oops! Our little secret got out. I am 34 years old and have lived by Minot North Dakota my entire life and knew about it for almost all of it. The Bakken oil field is not new. Not by a long shot! My grandma was a cook on the rigs back in the early 1980's when I was very young. That when first I learned of big oil reserves being here.

The volume of oil we have beneath us has been known about as common local knowledge for 30 plus years! The last big oil crunch in the 1970's is when the true volume was figured out. Not this year or last year but 30 some years ago!

Just ask around with the locals. We don't even hide the fact its been known for so long! We have been telling people this for years. No one in the rest of the country listened that all!

Guess who kept that secret under their hats? It wasn't us!

Whats keeping it from being refined is politics as usual. And not our state politics either. There is a simple solution to the putting in refineries here. The native Americans! Thats right. the people that were here first! Tribal land is sovern land. They are a sovern nation within the United States. The environmentalists and tree hungers can kiss their collective native American butts! They can build a refinery any shape, size and way they want! The Us government has little overall say about it to! Sovernty exempts them from a boat load of rules and regulations!

You want full American based refineries that produces cheap fuel with local oil at reasonable prices jump on board with the Natives! They got the land and the rights to do what they want with it!

Don't take my word for it. Do some in depth reading related to the native American rights that are grandfathered in. Its a real eye opener. The people our fore fathers over ran, subjugated, and pushed onto crappy land are our way out of a fuel shortage now! That land may soon be worth trillions with a few oil refineries on it!

Folks, do a little research before you post emails that your friends send to you....

http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/bakken.asp

Oh Well, looks like the wisdom and all knowing of snopes wins out again... do they sell stock??

<ahem>

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/38666/Is-Each-Generation-Degenerating-More

Always look for the source, especially when something looks too good to be true.

Why on earth would anyone want to sell at only $16 per barrel when the current price is several times that?

Reminds me of the time I was a millionaire. I had a piece of close to worthless, second-growth forest land adjacent to some owned by a coal company. They came around one day and showed me some drill reports that indicated I owned about $20 million of coal, and wanted me to sign a surface disturbance lease (For those of you that don't live in coal country, this means they get to cut all your trees, divert all the water, knock down buildings, and dig up the dirt - otherwise, they leave it as pristine as they found it). Being suspicious (twice burned), I asked the details. Turns out the removal cost alone would be over $40 million.

I've posted this a number of times, but I'll do it again. If you really want to understand oil reserves, you MUST understand the "P" rating system, i.e., is the oil P5 or P95. And, you MUST understand how to calculate EROI. These are numbers that somebody like T. Boone Pickens will use in deciding whether to part with his money. Political indignation won't produce a single thimbleful of oil.

Of course, oil can be made partially in situ from coal and oil shale at a fraction of the present cost of oil.

In the past the risk of OPEC waiting until multi-billions were invested in plants and then deciding that perhaps $25 a barrel was OK after all was great enough to prevent investment.

Now the cost of oil extraction from most wells is above the break even point of a decent oil from coal plant, but they are politically "on the nose".

This technology is likely to come into play when we realize that alternative energy isn't able to provide what is needed on the scale required, "green" liquid fuels can't supply enough of our needs to make a significant difference and oil is no longer easily available.