The Bakken can be described as formation of shale form rock spanning about 200,000 square miles of North Dakota, Montana and Saskatchewan. Its typically the greatest known resource of light sweet crude oil in North America.
Petroleum was stumbled on here in 1951, nevertheless due to technical constraints, it's only been until fairly recently that any significant amount of petroleum has actually been retrieved.
While the whole measure of oil contained in the Bakken shale could be several hundred billion barrels, the oil and gas is usually confined inside of the shale itself, and it is subsequently challenging to acquire.
In 2008, the USGS published research that determined the total officially recoverable petroleum in the Bakken at 3 to 4.3 billion barrels. That's obviously lots of petroleum, however way less than is probably inside of the shale structure itself.
Current enhancements in oil removal solutions have brought about outstanding boosts in the level of petroleum coming out of the Bakken. The important technologies, hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," has had the most significant outcome.
At the conclusion of 2010, the speed of petroleum production from the shale structure had improved to 458,000 barrels per day, which put a serious stress on the area infrastructure's ability to actually ship the petroleum out of the region.
A lot of these latest increases in output have inspired some specialists to conclude the very first USGS estimation of 3 - 4.3 billion barrels as far too low, and they could very well be correct. Most recent estimations have come up with numbers as much as 24 billion barrels of technically recoverable petroleum.
Needless to say, the key to determining the amount of total recoverable petroleum is in identifying exactly what proportion is technologically recoverable. Estimates of this have ranged from 1% to 50%, clearly a very broad range.
As with any subject connected with substantial amounts of capital, clashes of interest can begin to play a part in such assessments. The actual reports released by both the USGS and the state of North Dakota (theoretically more objective sources) in 2008 indicate the smaller range of percentage estimates are much more reasonable.
Certainly, the exact amount of technically recoverable oil depends in large part on engineering, and recent improvements in horizontal drilling and fracturing are the cause of large increases in production.
In The Year 2011, a senior manager at Continental Resources, which is certainly one of the main companies working in the Bakken region, suggested that it could be among the most significant discoveries of the last 30-40 years. He based this declaration on a total recovery of 24 billion barrels, which is obviously far more than the USGS and North Dakota studies.
Aside from this manager's apparent personal involvement in producing such claims, it is well worth noting that he's directly involved in production, and is almost certainly intimately familiar with the real-world use of the technology involved. For example, his organization is rolling out a technology which allows the drilling rigs themselves to relocate hundreds of yards under their own energy, increasing the amount of well exploration.
While it still remains to be seen what kind of endurance this formation has, and just what the total recoverable petroleum is going to be, there isn't any doubt it is the most dynamic development presently under production in North America.
The Bakken is likewise responsible for tremendous employment growth, a not-insignificant factor in today's rough economic climate. In fact, North Dakota's joblessness rate is currently the smallest in the country, and demand for employees of all types displays zero indication of letting up any time soon.
Read this article for more about the Bakken petroleum boom in North Dakota, and how it is going to form our everyday life in the coming years.