Untapped Oil Reserves in the United States in 2008

Thanks to a email from a old flying buddy of mine, I am writing this post for both of my blogs (http://aerospacedreams.blogspot.com/ and http://flash255bunker.blogspot.com/ ).

While the email that was sent to me delt with the Bakken Formation in Montana and North Dakota, I also found a fact sheet dealing with the Permian Basin – a region that I live in. Please use the links provided below and print these out for yourself and your friends. Email your friends with those links or a link to this blog for their own education. The news about the Bakken MUST get out to the general public. It must evade the efforts of the green party (I.e. The Democratic Party and their propaganda machine – the mainstream news media).

Quoting the United States Geological Survey report for the Permian Basin, "The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently assessed the undiscovered oil and gas potential of the Permian Basin Province of west Texas and southeast New Mexico. The assessment was geology based and used the total petroleum system concept. The geologic elements of a total petroleum system are petroleum source rocks (quality, source rock maturation, generation, and migration), reservoir rocks (sequence stratigraphy, petrophysical properties), and traps (trap formation and timing). This study assessed potential for technically recoverable resources in new field discoveries only; field growth (or reserve growth) of conventional oil and gas fields was not included. Using a this methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated a mean of 41 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas and a mean of 1.3 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the Permian Basin Province."

This is good news if the US had the strength to ignore those voices on the left and not harming the planet, etc, etc. But, the news is even better with what is known as the “Devonian-Mississippian Bakken Formation” This is a a area that covers North and South Dakota and parts of Montana. USGS estimates a mean “undiscovered” volume of 3.6 Billion barrels of oil, 1.85 TRILLION cubic feet of associated/dissolved natural gas. And finally, 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids in this region.

And since this is a light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16.00 per Barrel!

This is enough to fully fuel the American economy for Forty-One (41) straight years!

Now this next bit of information should really floor the reader. It was released several years ago (April 20, 2006, Stansberry Report Online). U.S. Oil Discovery – Largest Reserve in the World! Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world is more than 2 Trillion barrels. On August 8, 2005, President Bush mandated its extraction.

They reported this amazing news: We have more oil inside our own borders, than ALL the other proven reserves on the planet. Eight times as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Eighteen times as much oil as Iraq. Twenty-One and Twenty-Two times as much oil as Kuwait and Iran respectively. 500 times as much oil as Yemen. All right here in the United States of America.

And the reason WE are NOT extracting this?! You already know the answer to this question. It is because the environmentalists and others (I.e. The Greens and their lobby groups working on the Democratic party), have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil!

The head researcher of the study, James Bartis, says that we( the USA) got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East – more than TWO TRILLION barrels untapped. The Denver Post quoted him as saying, “That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today.”

Think about this, the current cost of a barrel of oil is: $40.41 as of February 8, 2009, but the prices of gas at the gas pump is still climbing again – getting ready to shock it to us again for the second year in a row. Why is this?

My thoughts on this is this. There are those who believe in Peak Oil – that oil is a finite resource. While there is talk (and only talk) of building more refineries – that will not happen. Because if one believes in Peak Oil – and that we have ALREADY crossed that dividing line, there will not be enough oil to process in 20-30 years. Which is also the amount of time it would take in order for a refinery to pay itself off. Here is a link about Peak Oil for you (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Oil).

I no longer believe in Peak Oil myself. More and more discoveries of oil are being made at far greater depth than what one would expect to find dead dinosaurs and plant matter to be at. Oil, I think, is a geological byproduct. We've been taught about the theory of Continental Drift and how the continents of the earth move relative to one another. This is an old hypothesis put forth by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912. (Check it out at Wikipedia yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift).

Is oil a byproduct of Continental Drift? For myself, as of this date; I think the answer is yes.

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References:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Oil
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift
3. http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2007/3115/
4. http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911
5. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2008/1353/
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3021/pdf/FS08-3021_508.pdf
photo from www.fotosearch.com (1169611) royalty free photograph.