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Posted by Keith in Washington [24.41.41.111] on Friday, August 20, 2010 at 14:06:27 :
In Reply to: WeŽll never run out posted by clueless [201.202.22.114] on Friday, August 20, 2010 at 13:40:14 :
Yes I have been following the Bakken shale oil work in ND. It has a lot of promise as do several other shale discoveries in this country. The reason this and other oil shale discoveries are considered oil reserves now where they have never been considered so is that we finally figured out how to produce them economically and now have the technology to do it. The biggest technology improvement that is opening up areas like this is horizontal drilling and controlled fracturing. They can literally drill miles to any side of the drill platform which significantly reduce environmental impact and gives each well a tremendous surface area in the oil shale to produce oil from. Each well can have thousands of feet exposure to the reservoir instead of 10's of 100's of feet of exposure in vertical or near vertical wells. Horizontal wells also penetrate many more zones or pockets oil than vertical wells.
I am not sure what the article was referring to when it mentioned the Rockies. However, Utah has tremendous oil shale deposits that are shallow and economic to produce. Funny thing those areas are being shut off to exploration by the Feds and environmentalist. Why do you think Clinton put some much land in Utah into wildernesses and national monuments and etc. early in his presidency? They wanted to stop the extraction of oil from this vast reserve.
To give a little insight in to the fact that I know what I am talking about and not blowing smoke. I spent 20+ years working in the oil and gas industry. I explored/looked for and found oil and gas fields. I worked in the Appalachians, Gulf Coast, Mid West and Alaska looking for oil and gas. I was also the lead geologist in the development of the Endicott oil field (Alaska) which is the first offshore Arctic oil field developed in the US.
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