Topic: Lots of Oil

[Pinhead]

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota ; western South Dakota ; and extreme eastern Montana .... check THIS out:
 
The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay , and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it
at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.
 
'When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea..' says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.

'This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years' reports, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.' And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada . For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves.... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!
 
That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight.

2. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from TWO YEARS AGO!

U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World!
Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In  three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:
- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
- 18-times as much oil as Iraq
- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait
- 22-times as much oil as Iran
- 500-times as much oil as Yemen
- and it's all right here in the Western United States.

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy.....WHY?

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.

Don't think 'OPEC' will drop its price - even with this find? Think again! It's all about the competitive marketplace, - it has to. Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists?

[nokrome]

cool, lets just throw up as many oil rigs as we can as quick as we can and suck that oil dry so we can convert it directly into cheap pollution, screw all that beautiful land and animals, not to mention our planet 
  finding more oil is not the solution to our problems, we need to put more effort into using science and technology to find different ways to power our lives and world
    our planet is starting to go downhill, we need to THINK about the future, not just ours but our kids and grand kids and so on


    and yes, i drive a gasoline powered car (not for long, E-car in the near future) and yes, i drive a gasoline powered motorcycle and thats fine, old technology but i think we are smart enough to move on from that
    but as usual it will probably come down to who stands to make the most money

[Inigo Montoya]

I see it both ways here. It would be nice to get away from foreign oil yet why tear up our landscape. We will never stop taking oil from foreign sources though till it dries up. I am sure the oil companies figure "why use ours when we can use theirs".  Having said that, a good chunk of western ND is virtually wasteland. Not much good for farming, mainly cattle. It might not be a huge loss yet once it starts, it will not stop till huge areas are covered with drills.

[azuredesign]

I wonder if it's a questions of enough, or too much, too late. The environmental impact of oil burning energy was not known when it became the primary source of energy during the industrial revolution. Nowadays, it seems like throw-back technology.
We know if we keep on going this way, there may not be other resources like air and water to sustain us. It's only been since we've been having increased expense and trouble in getting oil and it's byproducts that folks have been paying attention to developing alternative energy products and production.
I also wonder what the cost is for harvesting our new found resources, as the oil companies have been privy to this info for a while and have not acted on it. If there was a profit to be made, they'd have started in on it already.

[goon 1492]

That's interesting, just hope they don't disturbe that super volcano in Yellstone, cause ya know with a find that big it probably lurks over to that part of the country.

[DRam]

 There have been similar claims made for oil reserves in Western Canada.  If all the claims are true we could supply the world for some time.

  Even if man-caused global warming is just hysteria we need to be looking for less polluting sources of energy and ways to use energy more efficiently.  The person who comes up with those will be able to buy continents as private grounds.

[blue240sx]

i dont understand why everyone thinks that drilling for more oil right now means neglecting the developement of new sources of energy, there is no reason for those to be mutually exclusive.  really, those two things have got to be mutually inclusive right now because as much as all the talk of new renewable resources is, the simple fact is that we do not have a viable alternative at this time.

unless the planets population is cool with going back to the days of eating what you can grow and bicycling to work every day, we need to have some sort of stop gap solution while we're waiting on these alternative energy sources to become workable.

[Inigo Montoya]

Problem is corporations have all the money to do this research. If they do not feel like promoting alt energy, it will take a long time to go anywhere.