The Oil Sheiks of the Dakota's

[PORKER]

American Oil & Gas increases ownership in Bakken


American Oil & Gas Inc. has increased its working interest in the 87,000 gross acre Goliath project in the Bakken from 50% to 95% in roughly 63,000 net acres located in Williams and Dunn Counties, ND through two separate transactions - one with Teton Energy Corp. and the other with privately-held Evertson Energy Partners.

American purchased Teton Energy Corp.'s interests in the Goliath project, which comprised approximately 14,900 net undeveloped acres, Teton's 25% ownership in the Champion 1-25H well, 17% ownership in the Viall 1-30 well, 6% ownership in the Solberg 32-2 well, and Teton's interest in seven gross (approximately .12 net) producing Bakken wells for $900,000 in cash.

American also closed on an acreage exchange at Goliath with Evertson Energy Partners which resulted in American receiving approximately 11,600 net acres and Evertson receiving a 50% working interest in the Champion 1-25H well, a 34% working interest in the Viall 1-30 well, an 11.9% working interest in the Solberg 32-2 well and American's rights to formations below the Three Forks in four 640 acre sections.

American now controls roughly 60,000 net undeveloped acres at Goliath, a 25% working interest in the Champion 1-25H well, a 17% working interest in the Viall 1-30 well, a 6% working interest in the Solberg 32-2 well and an interest in seven gross (approximately .36 net) other producing Bakken wells.

"The Bakken play in the Williston Basin of North Dakota and Montana remains one of the most active and prolific oil areas in North America," stated Pat O'Brien, CEO of American. "This activity is supported by strong economic returns at current oil prices and a US Geological Survey assessment in 2008 that estimated the Bakken formation holds over three billion barrels of technically recoverable oil."

Source:Oil & Gas Financial Journal

[Oldtimer]

My son was just in Williston last week-- and he said you can't even find a pup tent to live in...No houses- motels are full- as the oil activity is picking up again....

[PORKER]

At least one part of the country is Booming ! They should buy a bunch of empty and foreclosed houses here in Mich. and ship them to the Bakken oil area.

[mwj]

Porker have they gave a figure on how much water it will take to recover this oil
Seems to me that it could be a huge stumbling block.

[PORKER]

Thats a good question, but I read somewhere that their will not need any water on alot of the oil extraction in the Bakken.

[mwj]

From what I was hearing I thought it was going to take a bunch of water to move the oil out of the fractured shale.
If this was an easy deal they would already be pumping.

[Oldtimer]

[mwj]

OT are you saying this is all easy pump oil or are they skimming the gravy off first?
With that big of a reserve transport would not be a prob. if it is low cost production.

[Oldtimer]

[PORKER]

October 23, Associated Press – (North Dakota) Storage tanks at Bakken Wells emitting natural gas. Companies tapping the rich Bakken shale and the formation below it in western North Dakota have reported excessive natural gas emissions from oil storage tanks and are working to burn or capture it, state and industry officials say.

The finding was surprising, and officials said it was unique to the Bakken formation, though they were not sure why. “We haven’t measured any affect on North Dakota’s air quality from it,” said the director of the state Department of Mineral Resources. “I think it’s a fairly easy problem to solve.” A manager of permitting and compliance for the state Health Department, said oil companies notified state and federal regulators in May that untreated natural gas was being discharged from oil storage tanks at some well sites.

The gas is a byproduct of the oil production process and is unique to high-quality crude from the Bakken shale and the Three Forks-Sanish formation directly below it, he said. North Dakota’s oil patch has nearly 4,550 producing oil wells, including 1,700 Bakken wells and about 200 wells aimed at the Three Forks-Sanish formation below the Bakken, he said. Machines called “heater-treaters” are used at well sites to remove gas and water from crude to improve its quality. It was at the storage tanks for processed oil that companies detected the leaking gas. State and federal regulators have tested dozens of Bakken wells, measuring the release of hydrocarbons.

Rules also are being crafted to monitor air quality at the well sites. The operations manager for Whiting Petroleum Corp’s already has retrofitted its oil storage tanks to capture or flare the raw natural gas for the Bakken oil storage tanks. “We will capture it 99 percent of the time,” he said. The state Health Department, hopes most companies will capture and sell the natural gas instead of flaring it. It would cost between $15,000 to $50,000 to upgrade a storage tank to burn or capture the natural gas. Source: http://cbs4denver.com/local/Storage.tanks.at.2.1267527.html

[Tex]

[PORKER]

3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995

Contact Information:
U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
Office of Communication
119 National Center
Reston, VA 20192 Main Contact
Phone: N/A



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Read FAQs about the Bakken Formation.
Listen to a podcast with the lead scientist on this topic.
Reston, VA - North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation.

A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.



3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Oil in North Dakota and Montana



Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources.

New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger technically recoverable oil volumes. About 105 million barrels of oil were produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007.

The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000.

The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A "continuous" oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest "continuous" oil accumulation in the U.S. is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1.0 billions of barrels of technically recoverable oil.

"It is clear that the Bakken formation contains a significant amount of oil - the question is how much of that oil is recoverable using today's technology?" said Senator Byron Dorgan, of North Dakota. "To get an answer to this important question, I requested that the U.S. Geological Survey complete this study, which will provide an up-to-date estimate on the amount of technically recoverable oil resources in the Bakken Shale formation."

The USGS estimate of 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil has a mean value of 3.65 billion barrels. Scientists conducted detailed studies in stratigraphy and structural geology and the modeling of petroleum geochemistry. They also combined their findings with historical exploration and production analyses to determine the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil estimates.

USGS worked with the North Dakota Geological Survey, a number of petroleum industry companies and independents, universities and other experts to develop a geological understanding of the Bakken Formation. These groups provided critical information and feedback on geological and engineering concepts important to building the geologic and production models used in the assessment.

Five continuous assessment units (AU) were identified and assessed in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana - the Elm Coulee-Billings Nose AU, the Central Basin-Poplar Dome AU, the Nesson-Little Knife Structural AU, the Eastern Expulsion Threshold AU, and the Northwest Expulsion Threshold AU.

At the time of the assessment, a limited number of wells have produced oil from three of the assessments units in Central Basin-Poplar Dome, Eastern Expulsion Threshold, and Northwest Expulsion Threshold.
The Elm Coulee oil field in Montana, discovered in 2000, has produced about 65 million barrels of the 105 million barrels of oil recovered from the Bakken Formation.

Results of the assessment can be found at http://energy.usgs.gov.

For a podcast interview with scientists about the Bakken Formation, listen to episode 38 of CoreCast at http://www.usgs.gov/corecast/.