Huge Bakken Oil Field A Myth

A few days ago I posted this about the Bakken Oill field.

It seems I jumped the gun a little:

Reports circulating on the Internet tell of an oil field spanning parts of western North Dakota and eastern Montana where 400 billion barrels of oil supposedly are just waiting to be tapped. However, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) tells Cybercast News Service that those huge estimates are "a myth."

A USGS report issued in April estimates that there are between 3 billion to 4.3 billion barrels of oil in what is referred to as "the Bakken Formation" -- well below the 400 billion barrels discussed on the Web, but up from the previous estimate of 151 million barrels made in 1995.

Richard Pollastro, Bakken Formation task leader at the USGS, said the myth stems from a 1999 draft report -- never published -- by a now-deceased USGS employee, Leigh Price. Price estimated that the Bakken Formation holds up to 400 billion barrels of oil. To put that in perspective, Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, has about 260 billion barrels of known oil reserves.

So it looks like there is not as much there as I thought. The thing about the Bakken field is that we can drill there.

Something to smile about- Bush called for an end to the offshore drilling ban today:

President George W. Bush was to call Wednesday on Congress to end a decades-old ban on offshore oil drilling, as a way to tap new energy sources to combat soaring gasoline prices.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement late Tuesday that, with gasoline now priced at more than four dollars a gallon, the president "will explicitly call on Congress to also pass legislation lifting the congressional ban on safe, environmentally-friendly offshore oil drilling."

Bush was to make his statement Wednesday at 10:35 am (1435 GMT) in the Rose Garden of the White House.

This would open up huge amounts of oil and natural gas supplies. It would also open up ANWAR.