This Bloomberg News article appeared in the June 8 Houston Chronicle. - Dave
in Houston

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/5824026.html

Huge ocean of crude lies 2 miles below North America
By ANTHONY EFFINGER

John Bartelson, who smokes Marlboro Lights through fingers blackened
with tractor grease, may look like an average wheat farmer. He isn't.
He's one of North Dakota's new oil barons.

Every month, he gets a check for tens of thousands of dollars from
Houston company EOG Resources, which drilled two oil wells on his land
last year. He says the day his first royalty check arrived was one to
remember.

"I smiled to beat hell, and I went to town and had a beer," Bartelson,
65, says.

His new wealth springs from the Bakken formation, a sprawling deposit
of high-quality crude beneath the durum wheat fields of North Dakota,
Montana and southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Bakken may give the
U.S. - the world's biggest importer of oil - a new domestic energy
source.

Unlike the tar from Canada's oil sands, Bakken crude needs little
refining. Swirl some of it in a Mason jar and it leaves a thin,
honey-colored film along the sides. It's light - almost like gasoline -
and sweet, meaning it's low in sulfur.

Best of all, the Bakken could be huge. The U.S. Geological Survey's
Leigh Price, a Denver geochemist who died in 2000, estimated that the
Bakken might hold 413 billion barrels. If so, it would dwarf Saudi
Arabia's Ghawar, the world's biggest field, which has produced about 55
billion barrels.


Better technology

The challenge is getting the oil out. Bakken crude is locked two miles
underground in a layer of dolomite, a dense mineral that doesn't
surrender oil the way more porous limestone does. The dolomite band is
narrow, too, averaging just 22 feet in North Dakota.

The USGS said in April that the Bakken holds as much as 4.3 billion
barrels that can be recovered using today's engineering techniques.
That's a fraction of the oil that Price said should be there, but it's
still the largest accumulation of crude in the 48 contiguous U.S.
states. North Dakota, where Bakken exploration is most intense now,
won't become Saudi Arabia unless technology improves.

For decades, the Bakken was the fool's gold of the oil industry. The
name describes a geological formation that looks like an Oreo cookie:
two layers of black shale that bleed oil into the middle layer of
dolomite. It's named after Henry O. Bakken, the North Dakota farmer who
owned the land where the first drilling rig revealed the shale layers
in the 1950s.

All of the layers are thin - about 150 feet altogether - and none of
them give up oil easily. In older, vertical wells, oil would often flow
for a month and then fizzle.


Different angle

Now, companies like EOG are drilling horizontally. They go straight
down 10,000 feet and then put a slight angle in the mud motor, a
30-foot piece of tubing that drives the bit, so they hit the Bakken
sideways, making a horizontal tunnel as much as 4,500 feet long through
the dolomite.

Then they pump pressurized water and sand into the hole to fracture the
dolomite, making cracks for oil to seep through.

It eventually winds up in a pipeline that runs east to Clearbrook,
Minn., and then south to Chicago.

Several billionaires are at work in the Bakken. Harold Hamm's Enid,
Okla.-based Continental Resources has leases on 487,000 acres in
Montana and North Dakota. Hamm, who started out driving a truck, owns
73 percent of Continental, worth $7.9 billion.

The big winner so far has been EOG, formerly a subsidiary of bankrupt
energy trader Enron Corp. It drilled a horizontal well in western North
Dakota just north of Parshall - population 1,028 - in April 2006. The
well came online a month later and kicked out 1,883 barrels in the
first seven days. Unlike the older vertical wells, it's still going.

Northern Oil & Gas, a five-person company near Minneapolis, makes money
without actually drilling or operating wells.

It leases in promising areas like the Bakken and gets paid when someone
else uses the land to drill.

The other people doing well in the Bakken are the mineral owners under
the oil wells - folks like John Bartelson. Oil drillers have paid them
millions for right of access to the oil deposits.

"It'll crash again," Bartelson says, sipping on a late- afternoon cup
of coffee beside his tractor.

Maybe so. But with crude trading above $130 a barrel, it'll be a long
time before the rigs leave again, and John Bartelson is likely to be a
wealthy man before they do.


Brought to you by the HoustonChronicle.com

Dave in Houston wrote:

This Bloomberg News article appeared in the June 8 Houston Chronicle. -
Dave in Houston

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/5824026.html

Huge ocean of crude lies 2 miles below North America
By ANTHONY EFFINGER

John Bartelson, who smokes Marlboro Lights through fingers blackened
with tractor grease, may look like an average wheat farmer. He isn't.
He's one of North Dakota's new oil barons.

Every month, he gets a check for tens of thousands of dollars from
Houston company EOG Resources, which drilled two oil wells on his land
last year. He says the day his first royalty check arrived was one to
remember.

"I smiled to beat hell, and I went to town and had a beer," Bartelson,
65, says.

That's great. But I bet the Oil Companies will somehow keep it from ever
hitting the market. This so called shortage of oil is crap and I'm sure
it's contrived by big oil. With record profits why would they. I have heard
up on the North Bank or Alaska big oil is pumping natural gas back down
their wells. Wonder why? I'm not blaming all this on "Big Oil" My thinking
its also Congress, Go Green Crap, Hedge Funds, its a combination of many
and few that want or can do anything about it. Once again the Middle Class
takes it in the ASS!

--
"You can lead them to LINUX
but you can't make them THINK"
Running Mandriva release 2008.0 free-i586 using KDE on i586

evodawg wrote:
Dave in Houston wrote:

This Bloomberg News article appeared in the June 8 Houston
Chronicle. - Dave in Houston

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/5824026.html

Huge ocean of crude lies 2 miles below North America
By ANTHONY EFFINGER

John Bartelson, who smokes Marlboro Lights through fingers
blackened
with tractor grease, may look like an average wheat farmer. He
isn't.
He's one of North Dakota's new oil barons.

Every month, he gets a check for tens of thousands of dollars from
Houston company EOG Resources, which drilled two oil wells on his
land last year. He says the day his first royalty check arrived was
one to remember.

"I smiled to beat hell, and I went to town and had a beer,"
Bartelson, 65, says.

That's great. But I bet the Oil Companies will somehow keep it from
ever hitting the market. This so called shortage of oil is crap and
I'm sure it's contrived by big oil. With record profits why would
they. I have heard up on the North Bank or Alaska big oil is pumping
natural gas back down their wells. Wonder why?

Usually it's to increase the pressure so that the oil comes out. You
have a different reason?

Hint--natural gas is not oil, and there does not appear to be a
natural gas shortage.

I'm not blaming all
this on "Big Oil" My thinking its also Congress, Go Green Crap,
Hedge
Funds, its a combination of many and few that want or can do
anything
about it. Once again the Middle Class takes it in the ASS!

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

J. Clarke wrote:
....

Hint--natural gas is not oil, and there does not appear to be a
natural gas shortage.
....

Watching the price of NG lately?

It went to $10 3 years ago or so and while it has dropped from those
highs, it's nowhere what it once was.

We're importing it and LPG gas as well.

Some or the largest reserves in the US are severely depleted and are
requiring extraordinary measures to continue to produce what they are
(like pulling vacuum, etc.) and what production there is is continuing
to decrease.

Many wells in this area that were drilled in the 50s and 60s and were
considered dry holes then were capped because they hadn't enough oil
production to pay are now being brought in as gas wells. But, those
aren't enough in production to make up for the far larger number that
are about tapped out...

--

"dpb" wrote

Some or the largest reserves in the US are severely depleted and are
requiring extraordinary measures to continue to produce what they are
(like pulling vacuum, etc.) and what production there is is continuing
to decrease.

Many wells in this area that were drilled in the 50s and 60s and were
considered dry holes then were capped because they hadn't enough oil
production to pay are now being brought in as gas wells. But, those
aren't enough in production to make up for the far larger number that
are about tapped out...

LOL ... this has always been the subject of much "scientific" debate and is
not nearly as cut and dried it sounds above. I'm hear to tell you that
reserve estimates are historically "estimated" as much at four to nine times
too _low_, and there is inarguable poof of that:

FACT: in1976 by all estimates we (US) had 23 billion barrels of reserves.

FACT: In 2005 we (US) still had an estimated 23 billion barrels of oil
reserves, even though we produced almost 40 billion barrels of oil between
1976 and 2005.

The reason is basically simple: technological advances in both drilling and
recovery.

Bakken alone has a USGS estimate of 400 billion barrels ... technological
advances and the incentive of "price" will almost guarantee that if only 3%
is recoverable, there is still one helluva lot of reserves in this country.

The "peak oil" folks, while being right about the finite nature of the
subject, remind me a bit too much of the "doom and gloom"
prognosticators/global warming crowd who appear to be in a hurry to see this
country brought to its knees.

Besides, there always horses.

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 5/14/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)

On Jun 11, 7:31*am, "Swingman" wrote:
"dpb" wrote

Some or the largest reserves in the US are severely depleted and are
requiring extraordinary measures to continue to produce what they are
(like pulling vacuum, etc.) and what production there is is continuing
to decrease.

Many wells in this area that were drilled in the 50s and 60s and were
considered dry holes then were capped because they hadn't enough oil
production to pay are now being brought in as gas wells. *But, those
aren't enough in production to make up for the far larger number that
are about tapped out...

LOL ... this has always been the subject of much "scientific" debate and is
not nearly as cut and dried it sounds above. I'm hear to tell you that
reserve estimates are historically "estimated" as much at four to nine times
too _low_, and there is inarguable poof of that:

FACT: in1976 by all estimates we (US) had 23 billion barrels of reserves.

FACT: In 2005 we (US) still had an estimated 23 billion barrels of oil
reserves, even though we produced almost 40 billion barrels of oil between
1976 and 2005.

The reason is basically simple: technological advances in both drilling and
recovery.

Bakken alone has a USGS estimate of 400 billion barrels ... technological
advances and the incentive of "price" will almost guarantee that if only 3%
is recoverable, there is still one helluva lot of reserves in this country..

The "peak oil" folks, while being right about the finite nature of the
subject, remind me a bit too much of the "doom and gloom"
prognosticators/global warming crowd who appear to be in a hurry to see this
country brought to its knees.

Besides, there always horses.

Oh nos!! Next thing the Gorians will be bitching about the horse
turds!!

Naaa... the NIMBY's need to take a powder and back off on their
totally messed up ideas about 'environmental' impact.
Drill, dammit.. with caution.

Swingman wrote:
"dpb" wrote

Some or the largest reserves in the US are severely depleted and are
requiring extraordinary measures to continue to produce what they are
(like pulling vacuum, etc.) and what production there is is continuing
to decrease.

Many wells in this area that were drilled in the 50s and 60s and were
considered dry holes then were capped because they hadn't enough oil
production to pay are now being brought in as gas wells. But, those
aren't enough in production to make up for the far larger number that
are about tapped out...

LOL ... this has always been the subject of much "scientific" debate and is
not nearly as cut and dried it sounds above. I'm hear to tell you that
reserve estimates are historically "estimated" as much at four to nine times
too _low_, and there is inarguable poof of that:

I wasn't talking about general reserves; I was speaking of areas in
production and specifically of areas in production around here (Hugoton
gas field).

--

evodawg wrote:

. I have heard
up on the North Bank or Alaska big oil is pumping natural gas back down
their wells. Wonder why?

Because there are no natural gas pipelines in the area?

-- Doug