The US Geological Survey is about to release a new report on the Bakken Formation, an oil deposit that spans areas of North and South Dakota and parts of Montana. The report will specify accurate assessments of the oil reserve that is currently estimated to contain up to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil. If true, this will expand the known oil reserves of the U.S. up to ten times the known capacity to date.
The significance of this report will, of course, depend upon the willingness of Americans to drill for this oil. Like reserves in ANWAR and the Gulf of Mexico, oil that remains under the surface does little to help us toward energy independence.
Next Energy News puts it this way in their report:
The US imported about 14 million barrels of Oil per day in 2007, which means US consumers sent about $340 Billion Dollars over seas building palaces in Dubai and propping up unfriendly regimes around the World, if 200 billion barrels of oil at $90 a barrel are recovered in the high plains the added wealth to the US economy would be $18 Trillion Dollars which would go a long way in stabilizing the US trade deficit and could cut the cost of oil in half in the long run.
Perhaps the record cost of fuel at the pump will motivate us to begin to exploit the oil in our own back yard. I anticipate a fight with “environmentalists,” however, who no doubt will find the potential environmental impact much too severe to consider a shot at greater energy independence.
