Liquid Salt Extracts Oil from Sand

Jupiterimages

Analysis by Nic Halverson

A more eco-friendly method for extracting oil and tar from sand has been developed by a group of researchers at Penn State University. Utilizing ionic liquids to separate heavy viscous oil from sand, the team's technique could help reduce toxic waste from surface-minded oil sands and aid clean-up efforts after oil spills.

Tar sands, also know as bituminous sands or oil sands, constitute approximately two-thirds of the world's estimated oil reserves. Canada is the world's major producer of the unconventional petroleum from tar sands, and the United States imports more than 1 million barrels of oil per day from Canada, nearly twice as much as from Saudi Arabia. An estimated 32 billion barrels of oil could potentially exist in Utah's tar sands.

Extraction and separation of these deposits are often expensive and harmful to the environment because of they contain complex mixtures of sand, clay, water and bitumen, a "heavy" or highly viscous oil. Processing this mixture to fuel requires significant amounts of water and energy and generates contaminated waste water that is stored in open air ponds. Toxic to aquatic life, this waste water can seep into groundwater, polluting rivers and lakes. Additionally, local fresh water supplies can be depleted as this process requires large amounts of water.

However, the new method developed by the Penn State research team uses very little energy and water, and all solvents are recycled and reused.

Paul Painter, professor of polymer science in the department of materials science and engineering, and his team spent the last 18 months developing this new method using ionic liquids (salt in a liquid state) to facilitate the separation. No waste process water is generated since the separation takes place at room temperature.

"Essentially all of the bitumen is recovered in a very clean form, with no detectable mineral fines, which interact preferentially with the ionic liquid, and no contamination from the ionic liquid," explains Painter on his department's website.

The bitumen, solvents and sand/clay mixtures separate into three distinct parts. They can be removed separately and solvents can be reused.

This method can also be used to extract oil from beach sand after oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez disasters. Using sand polluted by the BP oil spill in one experiment, the team was able to separate hydrocarbons from the sand within seconds. After a small amount of water was used to clean remaining ionic liquids, the sand was so clean could be returned to the beach, instead of landfills.

The ionic liquids researchers work with are based on 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium cations, a positively charged material with high chemical and thermal stability, a low degree of flammability, and almost negligible vapor pressure, which makes recovering the ionic liquid relatively easy.

The team has built a functioning bench top model system and is currently reducing their discovery to practice for patenting.

Reposted from: http://news.discovery.com

Settlement Talks Pick Up Ahead of BP Oil Spill Trial

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Some experts have estimated potential civil and criminal liabilities for the Gulf of Mexico explosion, battled by fireboats in April 2010, at $40 billion.

NEW ORLEANS — Nearly two years after the oil rig explosion that killed 11 people and spilled millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the myriad plaintiffs suing BP and other companies over the disaster are about to get their day in court.

Or not.

With the start of the high-profile trial set for next Monday, and the specter of potential liability that some experts have estimated at $40 billion, BP and other defendants are stepping up negotiations to end the litigation before Judge Carl J. Barbier of Federal District Court picks up his gavel.

“We are ready to settle, if we can do so on fair and reasonable terms,” Robert Dudley, BP’s chief executive, said this month during a conference call about the company’s earnings. “But we are preparing vigorously for trial.”

Charges from hundreds of civil cases from plaintiffs that include the United States government, state and local governments, and individuals and businesses have been consolidated in a federal courtroom here. Along with BP, defendants include Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig; Halliburton, the company that poured the concrete that lined the well; and Cameron International, which made the industry fail-safe device known as a blowout preventer.

Numerous reports have identified errors and problems that contributed to the largest oil spill in United States history, including a faulty concrete job, poor decisions leading up to the blast and the failure of the blowout preventer’s rams and blades to stop the oil.

Several attorneys familiar with the negotiations said settlement talks had intensified in recent weeks. On Friday, Moex Offshore became the first company among the defendants to settle with the government. Moex, which owned 10 percent of the well but did not have a role in operating it, agreed to pay $90 million to federal and state governments. The Department of Justice said the deal included $70 million in civil penalties, the most ever under the 1972 federal Clean Water Act — a record that is likely to be broken before long.

Some of the remaining obstacles to a larger settlement deal are among the defendant companies, rather than between them and the plaintiffs, and concern the amounts that the various parties would contribute toward the negotiated sum.

To many familiar with the case, there is little question that BP would be better off settling. “The incentives are very large for BP to get out,” said Edward F. Sherman, a law professor at Tulane University here.

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Breaking Fuel From the Rock

Geologists long knew there was natural gas in the Marcellus shale formation, but thought it impossible to unlock. But producers in the last decade learned to mine this huge resource by drilling horizontally to reach a large surface area, then fracturing the rock with high-pressure water, sand, and lubricant chemicals.

View Interactive Here

U.S. Oil Fields Stage “Great Revival,” But No Easing Gas Prices

Mason Inman

For National Geographic News

Rigs like this one near Stanley, North Dakota, are an increasingly familiar sight in some parts of the United States, where the pace of oil drilling is at a 25-year high.  Photograph by Karen Bleier, AFP/Getty Images

The United States has long been seen as a nation in its twilight as an oil producer, facing a relentless decline that began when President Richard Nixon was in the White House. He and every president since pledged to halt the U.S. slide into greater dependence on foreign oil, but the trend seemed irreversible—until now. Forty-one years later, U.S. oil production is on the rise.

U.S. oil fields yielded an estimated 5.68 million barrels per day in 2011—their highest output since 2003, thanks largely to a surge of new production from shale oil that lies beneath the Great Plains. The rush so far is centered in North Dakota, where oil production has quadrupled since 2005, but drilling is set to spread across the prairie and beyond.

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BP oil spill of April 2010 was not the largest in U.S. history, lawmaker says

By Jonathan Tilove, The Times-Picayune

WASHINGTON -- At a recent hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee, U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., called the BP oil spill the "worst oil spill in our nation's history," a commonplace description of an event that President Obama, in his Oval Office address on the spill last June, told the nation was "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced."

A 1910 photograph shows the Lakeview Gusher in Maricopa, Calif., which spewed 48,000 barrels of oil a day.

Later in the hearing, Rep. Jeff Landry, R-New Iberia, who had not been present when Markey made his claim, sought to correct the record. The distinction of being the largest oil spill in American history, he said, belongs to California's Lakeview Gusher of 1910.

For 18 months in 1910 and 1911, the Lakeview Gusher spewed 9.4 million barrels of oil onto the scrubland of California's San Joaquin Valley -- nearly twice the 4.9 million barrels discharged into the Gulf of Mexico in the Macondo blowout.

Landry's comment might seem a petty exercise in misdirection. Markey had described it as the "worst," not the "largest," oil spill. And, the Lakeview Gusher was hardly seen as a disaster on the scale of the Gulf spill. In an age before TV, let alone cable TV, it was hardly seen at all, although an excursion train transported San Franciscans nearly 300 miles to view this geyser of hydrocarbons. A century later, according to Don Maxwell, who runs a local museum, "the sagebrush is the same where it spilled as where it didn't."

But Landry said his point was to place the Deepwater Horizon disaster in context, especially as he and other members of the Louisiana delegation have pushed to get offshore drilling back on track.

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A White-Hot Future for Oil and Gas

By JAMES KANTER


















Refining towers at the Zawiya oil refinery near Tripoli, Libya.

BRUSSELS — Opportunities in oil and natural gas have rarely been so bountiful. New finds and technological advances and fresh access to some countries are pushing exploration and production into areas once considered peripheral.

Some of the most promising new fields are in deep water off the coast of Brazil. Experts say they could yield as much oil as the North Sea. There have been significant strikes off the coast of French Guiana, north of Brazil, and off Ghana in West Africa.

Iraq is opening up after years of sanctions and war. It could be a second Saudi Arabia.

Russia is increasing production in its Arctic regions, while Canada is steadily producing more oil from its abundant tar sands.

In the United States, the vast deposits of natural gas found in shale rock could transform the country into a major energy exporter.

Those prospects “will certainly have significant impacts on the energy map,” said Maria van der Hoeven, the newly appointed executive director of the International Energy Agency, which advises member countries, including Germany, Japan and the United States, on energy policy.

The prospects are coming into view as revolution and instability threaten new investments in resource-rich countries like Libya and Iraq and after a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan that prompted Germany to declare it would phase out nuclear technology.

Fewer reactors should drastically increase demand for electricity from natural gas, while lower-than-expected growth in energy exports from the Middle East and North Africa could “radically alter the global energy balance,” Ms. van der Hoeven said.

Yet the new opportunities also present companies and investors with a dizzying array of risks — including the high cost of development and exploitation and the possibility that energy prices could fall, especially if the global economy slows drastically and energy demand slackens.

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New microbe discovered eating Gulf oil spill

Great potential' for dispersing oil in deep sea, researchers report

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe suddenly is flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico and gobbling up the BP spill at a much faster rate than expected, scientists reported Tuesday.

Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled since the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

Also, the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers reported in the online journal Sciencexpress.

"Our findings ... suggest that a great potential for intrinsic bioremediation of oil plumes exists in the deep-sea," lead researcher Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley, California, said in a statement.

The data is also the first ever on microbial activity from a deep-water dispersed oil plume, Hazen said.

Environmentalists have raised fears about the giant oil spill and the underwater plume of dispersed oil, particularly its potential effects on sea life. A report just last week described a 22-mile-long underwater mist of tiny oil droplets.

"Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea" cold temperature bacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes, Hazen reported.

Their findings are based on more than 200 samples collected from 17 deep-water sites between May 25 and June 2. They found that the dominant microbe in the oil plume is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales.

This microbe thrives in cold water, with temperatures in the deep recorded at 41 degrees Fahrenheit.

Hazen suggested that the bacteria may have adapted over time due to periodic leaks and natural seeps of oil in the Gulf.

Scientists also had been concerned that oil-eating activity by microbes would consume large amounts of oxygen in the water and create a "dead zone" dangerous to other life. The new study found that oxygen saturation outside the oil plume was 67 percent while within the plume it was 59 percent.

"The low concentrations of iron in seawater may have prevented oxygen concentrations dropping more precipitously from biodegradation demand on the petroleum, since many hydrocarbon-degrading enzymes have iron as a component," Hazen said. "There's not enough iron to form more of these enzymes, which would degrade the carbon faster but also consume more oxygen."

These latest findings may initially seem to be at odds with the study published last Thursday in Science by researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which confirmed the existence of the oil plume and said microorganisms did not seem to be biodegrading it very quickly.

However, Hazen and Rich Camilli of Woods Hole both said Tuesday that the studies complement each other.

The Woods Hole team used a robot submarine and a mass spectrometer to detect the plume, but were forced to leave the area in late June, when Hurricane Alex threatened. At that time, they figured the plume was likely to remain for some time.

But that was before the well was capped in mid-July. Hazen said that within two weeks of the capping, the plume could not be detected, but there was a phenomenon called marine snow that indicated microbes had been feasting on hydrocarbons.

As of Tuesday, there was no sign of the plume, Hazen said.

That doesn't mean there is no oil left from the 4.9 million barrels of crude that spilled into the Gulf after the April 20 blowout at BP's Deepwater Horizon rig. The U.S. government estimated on Aug. 4 that 50 percent of the BP oil is gone from the Gulf and the rest is rapidly degrading.

The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the U.C. Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP. Other support came from the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Oklahoma Research Foundation.

Sciencexpress is the online edition of the journal Science.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

U.S. Investigation Finds BP 'Ultimately Responsible,' Contractors to Blame

A U.S. investigation board blames the worst offshore oil spill in the nation's history on British oil giant BP and also points to BP contractors for contributing to the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

The loss of 11 lives at BP's Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, and devastating pollution of the gulf were the result of "poor risk management, last-minute changes to plans, failure to observe and respond to critical indicators, inadequate well control response, and insufficient emergency bridge response training," finds the board's final report.

Response vessels spray water onto the blazing Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, April 21, 2011 (Photo courtesy U.S. Coast Guard)

The final investigative report of the Joint Investigation Team of the U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, BOEMRE, was released Wednesday.

It concludes that four companies were responsible for the April 20 blowout that killed 11 crewmembers and spilled five million barrels of oil into the gulf over the next 87 days.

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To view a database of all legal actions click here.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2011. All rights reserved.

US Report Spreads Blame for BP Oil Spill

Content provided by AFP

THE GIST

• Sub-contractors Halliburton, Transocean, and Cameron are implicated as well as BP for poor management.
• A top lawmaker said the report should eliminate any "excuses" for passing critical reforms and called for congressional hearings.

A key US government report spreads the blame for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, citing a bad cement job, poor management by BP and its subcontractors and risky shortcuts.

The findings by the agency that regulates offshore drilling are largely in line with other investigations into the 2010 disaster, but offer the most detailed analysis to date.

The report that came out on Wednesday is expected to influence a criminal investigation being conducted by the US Justice Department and impact fines imposed upon the British energy giant. Regulators said they planned to issue seven new citations based upon the report's conclusions.

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Why? Tell Me Why!: Alaska Oil

After spending a week in Alaska, Discovery News' Kasey-Dee Gardner wanted to find out why the state is so abundant in that resource.

Will foreign oil dependence end any time soon?

By Cherise LaPine Grueninger

When we think of reducing foreign oil dependency, most of the effort is focused on alternative fuel sources and the engineering more efficient vehicles. It's an easy way to get the message across — buying gasoline is something that hits our wallets frequently. Reducing our gasoline consumption will make the biggest impact, but petroleum is also a component of many common products and manufacturing components, such as asphalt, plastics, waxes and lubricants. Much of our consumer-driven culture is dependent on the cheap and easy availability of fossil fuels.

Dependency on foreign oil challenges our economic and national security because we're not in a position to negotiate over price or availability. In some cases, importing oil strengthens the economies of other countries, and thanks to oil cartel price manipulation, we have no control over the cost of the oil we import, which has a serious impact on the economy.

The U.S. Department of Energy links our recent recessions to oil price shocks. For instance, in the first half of 2010, we spent $50 billion more on foreign oil than compared to the same period in 2009. Despite the cost of the oil, the U.S. still consumes the most oil in the world. In May of 2010, the U.S. imported 61 percent, or 374 million barrels, of oil.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, we may never be able to eliminate our need for foreign oil.

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Eco-friendly Removal of Oil from Soil

Analysis by Tim Wall

A Lithuanian company claims that their three stage process can remove oil from contaminated soil using only environmentally friendly chemicals, bacteria, and plants.

Oil contaminated soil comes from both accidents and industrial processes. The refining of oil often results in large amounts of highly contaminated sludge. But oil soaked into soil requires different cleaning techniques than oil spills on water.

The company Biocentras first uses a surfactant, a chemical which breaks down the chemically repellent barriers between substances. The surfactant, mixed with water, is used to wash the soil and can be used up to ten times, Biocentras reports. Afterward, the chemical breaks down into a “natural” compound, according to a press release by Eureka, a European business technology advocacy group.

The second stage uses microorganisms to break down the oil remaining in the soil.

"The bacteria used in the process lie dormant in negative temperatures, but then come to life as the temperature rises. However, some organisms can start to degrade oil at temperatures that are only a little more than is required to melt ice," said Monika Kavaliauske, manager at Biocentras, in a press release by the company. But, she added "it is much more effective in warmer climates."

Microorganisms break the oil down to a point where hardy plants can be used to further break down the oil. Using plants to clean up the environment is called “phytoremediation.”

Don't try this at home, only certain plants can take that kind of abuse. Moviegoers might remember the scene in Fight Club where members of Project Mayhem put up a billboard that says, “Did you know used motor oil can be used as fertilizer?”

It can't.

The whole process takes about one year, and leaves soil that can be used by other, less hardy plants. Biocentras has cleaned soils with up to .67 pounds (300 grams) of oil per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of soil.

So far more than 22,000 tons of soil have been cleaned using this process, mostly in Lithuania. But Biocentras hopes to expand into the Middle East, where warmer temperatures will make the process even more effective.

“We have no clients in the Middle East and are actively looking for them. There are potential applications for most of the world and we are keen to develop it further,” said Kavaliauske.

Cannes 2011: With documentary on BP oil spill, a festival tries to dig in

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com

24 Frames

Movies: Past, present and future

The Cannes Film Festival isn't known for its documentaries. But once in a while, a filmmaker takes on a current event in a way that gets the crowd buzzing. That happened in 2004 when Michael Moore came in with "Fahrenheit 9/11" and walked out with a Palme d'Or. And it happened last year when Charles Ferguson premiered his "Inside Job" to festival-goers on the Croisette; amid the glitz and opulence, everyone was talking about the perils of greed.

On Tuesday night, the festival tried the trick again by showing Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell's documentary about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. There would seem to be a promising cinematic story in the tale of a big corporation acting in dubious moral and legal ways, possibly with the help of the U.S. government, leading to a catastrophe.

The backstory on the spill was a good primer for those who have forgotten the cataclysmic events of that spring. And it was noteworthy to see Peter Fonda pop up; the actor-activist executive produced the film and made a small appearance. But any Fergusonian ambitions were soon extinguished. The crowd squirmed restlessly as the film moved from facts about the spill to topics as tenuously connected as the recent revolution in Egypt and the Japanese nuclear disaster, all while asserting some vague conspiracy between government and corporate activities. The filmmakers are activists in the realm of alternative energy (Tickell previously helmed the doc "Fuel"), and they go from showing the working-man victims in the gulf to talking-head voices of outrage who say things like, "The power system won't save us from corporate forces that kill us."

The you-can-make-a-difference activism is present in Moore's films too, of course, but usually after he has entertainingly worked the crowd into a lather, something that, judging by the audience's reaction here, the filmmakers don't do.

There may yet, however, be a filmic story to tell about the spill -- "Twilight" studio Summit is currently developing one, based on a dramatizing of the hours leading up to the spill.

-- Steven Zeitchik

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

US Eyes More Rules to Prevent Oil Blowout

http://www.reuters.com

The damaged blowout preventer from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig is extracted by the Q4000 vessel from the Gulf of Mexico in this handout photograph taken on September 4, 2010 and released on September 5.

Credit: Reuters/Petty Officer 1st Class Thomas Blue/U.S. Coast Guard/ Handout

By Ayesha Rascoe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government is weighing more safety standards for blowout preventers on oil-drilling rigs, after a probe uncovered a possible design flaw that may have helped to cause last year's massive Gulf oil spill, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Tuesday.

The Interior Department has imposed new testing requirements for blowout preventers since the spill, but Salazar said recent findings from an investigation of the drilling disaster may prompt further reforms.

Salazar's comments come about two weeks before the first anniversary of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig that ruptured BP's underwater Macondo well, killing 11 workers and unleashing more than 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

"As a result of the investigation that was just concluded through the forensic examination, we'll also be looking to develop some additional improvements with respect to (blowout preventers)," Salazar told a conference call after meeting Mexican officials to discuss drilling safety.

Salazar said any new rules would most likely focus on instruments, and the department would also look at the effectiveness of using dual shear rams in blowout preventers.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes said the department would consult the recently established federal Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee on new standards for blowout preventers.

The department will also seek public comment in coming months about what upgrades would be appropriate for blowout preventers, Hayes said.

In an emergency, the shear rams in blowout preventers are supposed to cut drill pipe to seal a leaking well.

A forensic review of the blowout preventer from BP's Macondo well found an off-center pipe stopped the fail-safe device from operating properly.

The pipe disabled the blowout preventer, which was supposed to act as a last line of defense against a catastrophic spill, according to the report commissioned by the Interior Department and Coast Guard.

The report by Norwegian-based Det Norske Veritas recommended that the industry study ways to make sure shear rams can completely cut pipes regardless of their position and said any findings should be incorporated into the design of future and existing blowout preventers.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Dale Hudson)

Photo Credit: The damaged blow out preventer from Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig is extracted by the Q4000 vessel from Gulf of Mexico.

Reuters/Petty Officer 1st Class Thomas Blue/US Coast Guard/Handout

U.S. urged to engage in energy cooperation with Cuba

Washington – The United States should begin a direct dialogue with Cuba to promote energy and environmental cooperation and reduce the island's dependence on Venezuela, according to a report released Thursday by the Center for Democracy in the Americas.

The independent, non-profit organization, which advocates for an easing of the U.S. embargo on Cuba, outlined in its 59-page report 10 changes that Washington should adopt to promote energy cooperation with the Communist-ruled island as Havana prepares to start tapping offshore oil deposits.

"After living through the BP spill, we can't maintain the illusion that the embargo will stop Cuba from drilling and must instead adopt policies that protect U.S. economic, environmental, and foreign policy interests," CDA Executive Director Sarah Stephens said.

Citing the U.S. Geological Survey, the CDA said approximately 5 billion barrels of oil and 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie beneath the Gulf of Mexico in land belonging to Cuba.

The discovery of commercially viable amounts of oil would transform and provide stability to the Cuban economy and is "likely to significantly alter" the island's relations with oil-rich, leftist-led Venezuela and the rest of Latin America, Asia and other leading energy producing and consuming nations, the report said.

At present, Cuban energy production falls short of daily domestic demand and leaves the island dependent on Venezuela for roughly two-thirds of its energy supply.

The CDA calls the U.S. embargo a Cold War remnant that prohibits U.S. companies from "joining Cuba in efforts to extract its offshore resources" and leaves the United States without a viable action plan in the event of a potential oil spill such as the recent BP oil disaster.

The report, which encourages direct dialogue to ensure protection of the countries' mutual interests, proposes that Washington permit an exchange of scientific information and allow U.S. firms to work with Cuba on "efforts to protect drilling safety."

The CDA also calls on the U.S. Congress to support a bipartisan measure introduced last year by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) and Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) that would allow U.S. companies "to participate in oil exploration and effective crisis planning with Cuba."

The report comes amid expectation that Cuba will drill 20 wells by the end of 2011, mainly in the area between Havana and Varadero. Exploratory drilling led by foreign companies, meanwhile, will continue with the aim of locating new deposits and ascertaining the full potential of Cuba's offshore Economic Exclusive Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Cuba's EEZ covers a 112,000-kilometer (43,243-mile) area that has been divided into 59 blocks; the island's partners in its offshore drilling plans include Spain's Repsol-YPF, Venezuela's PDVSA and Vietnam's PetroVietnam.

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino

Fossil River - The Novel Closer to Fact than Fiction!

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

Released: 4/10/2008

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 April 10, 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.

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/.