Vast U.S. Oil Reserve Could Spur Independence

Kiplinger reports:

North Dakota as an oil patch state? Yes, probably in a decade or less. The state’s Three Forks-Sanish formation could rival nearby Bakken Play, a vast oil shale field. Together they could hold 200 billion barrels of oil, about four times Alaska’s entire oil cache. That’s enough black gold to provide the equivalent of 30 years’ worth of U.S. oil needs at current usage levels, without having to import one barrel from abroad.

Oil companies are scurrying to stake claims to the bonanza that’s been lying untouched for decades beneath the northern Great Plains. No -- oilmen weren’t shooed away by ham-handed federal regulators. It’s just that the oil was nearly impossible to extract because it’s buried nearly two miles underground, and even if a well were sunk in the center of the field, crude wouldn’t gush out. The oil isn’t in subterranean pools, but is locked up in soft rock that until recently had to be mined like coal or aluminum ore.

New drilling and recovery technologies developed during the past decade make the fields ripe for production. Drills that can be steered in any direction bore in from the sides of hills covering land that formed a great inland sea millions of years ago. Production is done by fracturing the rock in place, literally shocking it to liquefy the oil for pumping into local storage tanks, and later, into pipelines.

Great news.