An ALG News Advisory
With all of the bad news coming out of Washington about the Democrats’ bickering and dickering over America’s right to drill for its own oil, it’s sometimes easy to forget that out in the hinterlands, the good news is, “We already are!”
In fact, regular readers know that way out west in North Dakota and Montana, the Bakken oil strike is resurrecting memories of Titusville, Pennsylvania, where in 1859, in “the valley that changed the world,” the modern oil industry was born.
As we reported on September 3rd, the Bakken oil reserve is the largest single oil repository ever discovered in the United States. It is estimated to hold 10 times more oil than Alaska’s North Slope. And it could supply the American people with oil for the next 41 years.
Importantly, the highly respected Kiplinger Business Resource Center recently reported to its readers, “Note that the Bakken Play region is not an environmentally sensitive area similar to Alaskan tundra that has stymied much oil field development because of concerns about damage to the fragile environment.”
The fact is, as ALG News reporters learned directly from the field, the Bakken reserve is almost exclusively on private property. So, barring some underhanded political gyrations by the hard left, the repository should be largely safe from government stonewalling.
For a fairly informative overview of the Bakken potential, we encourage readers to peruse Andrea Stone’s piece in USA Today, “Oil boom creates millionaires and animosity in North Dakota.” Keep in mind, however, that the article tends to err on the side of understatement. For example, while it is true that the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that approximately 4.3 billion barrels of oil are currently recoverable, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), in a 2006 report, estimated up to 503 billion barrels of potential resources in place.
For an even better feel for what’s actually underway on the ground, we urge you to visit http://bakkenshale.blogspot.com/. Once there, you may wish to sign up for the “Bakken Discussion Group” email service. The Group’s more than 300 members are largely onsite, in the thick of the action. So, day after day, you’ll hear firsthand the insiders’ insights into what’s really happening at America’s largest-ever oil reserves – from those who are actually “Bringing home the Bakken.”
