N.D. Oil Potential gets a New Look By McClatchy Newspapers
https://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/12/03/news/business/50-potential.txt BISMARCK, N.D. - A rigorous assessment of North Dakota's oil potential will focus on the elusive but potentially explosive middle Bakken formation and be done more than a year earlier than previously thought. The assessment will be conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey and be complete by March 2008, a federal geologist said in a briefing held in Bismarck last week. State leaders have been pushing for an update on the basin's resources. The last time one was done was in 1995, and oil recovery technology has advanced enough in the past decade to open up vast subterranean worlds of oil. One is the middle Bakken, which possibly contains hundreds of billions of barrels of oil, but economical production continues to confound oil producers. Assistant federal geologist Patrick Leahy said it's time to put new data and new technology together for North Dakota and see what undiscovered resources can be recovered through new technology. The middle Bakken - an oil shale layer 10,000 feet deep - is producing dramatically just across the North Dakota border in Montana. Oil producers on the North Dakota side are having mixed results, and state leaders believe an updated assessment could sort out information and lead to big-time development here. Leahy said the middle Bakken will be a key to the overall assessment, now that mile-long horizontal drill rigs can pierce the oil-bearing fractures in the formation. Leahy said the survey assesses the country's 47 basins, and it's North Dakota's turn. He said his agency does world-class work that's closely watched by the industry for where to invest and develop. "They make choices all the time," he said. Ron Ness, director of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said the USGS's decision to assess North Dakota sooner rather than later is good news. The middle Bakken formation covers a vast amount of western North Dakota, north to south, and the size of the development "could be incredible," Ness said. Oil development is on the uptick in North Dakota, with 40 rigs drilling and nearly 4,000 wells producing 113,000 barrels a day, a 20 percent increase from two years ago. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., invited Leahy to meet with state oil leaders. "I think this will really be helpful," Dorgan said. "This will give us information about what's there and what's recoverable." Dorgan had asked the USGS to authenticate the findings of a Denver-based USGS geologist, Leigh Price, who estimated that the middle Bakken resource contains 500 billion barrels of oil.