Bakken oil Trumps Desert oil
Are there future solutions out there just waiting to be found? America seems to be blessed with oil and natural gas riches right under its own rocks.
The Bakken was discovered in 1951 and was all but forgotten because it takes billions to get the oil out of the ground and before that there is the R&D stage, also costly.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.
The oil is there, and the natural gas, literally in my backyard, here (in Texas). There is more oil and gas in the continental U.S., not including Alaska that would make us oil independent forever. Here’s the only silver lining in the oil cloth: the fetching price could fuel those who don’t think that oil will pay off.
Everyone can read the writing in the sky-high prices but it’s time to get on the bandwagon. Conservatives are blaming liberals for not wanting to drill here and now. But money talks louder than any big mouth talking head—whether he or she pledges Democrat or Republican. This is a job for bipartisan unity, not bipartisan bickering because we Americans and Europeans will pay the jump at the pump and will also pay a price on the world stage where everyone else will be laughing at us.
Article comments
1 - David
A writer for Harpers, I forget who at the moment, said that this nation's economy is now bubble driven. Instead of a bubble happening every once in a while, people getting upset, legislative change happening..., we are getting bubbles every few years, only to pop and then a new bubble takes over, with no legislative activity whatsoever to curb the abuses and excesses. So what is the eventual outcome? We are seeing it in the devaluation of the dollar and the destruction of the global marketplace, first with food. This is because all the fake money generated by people using very easy credit are suddenly finding that banks and other lenders are wanting their money back. Now. Because they see the writing on the wall and want to get out while the getting is good. Imagine when the US's bank, China, comes calling and we don't have the money to pay them....
2 - jamminsue
Just out of curiosty, does anyone know how many barrels of oil the US uses in a day? and, what our processing capacity is and how old those facilites are? These are questions that should be addressed when discussing accessing US oilfileds of any wort, anywhere. Sorry, I honestly do not know.
3 - bliffle
We currently owe the Chinese about $1.5trillion and they are angry that we devalued the dollar. Not good.
David is right, we have a bubble driven economy that flits from one bubble to another. There is too much cash in the hands of speculators. It's a failure of Monetarism: we have monetarized everything imaginable and then mortgaged everything. Thus, we have about $550trillion in monetary paper (representing what economists calll extrinsic value, i.e., perceived value other than what things are really worth) riding on the backs of about $45trillion in capital (representing intrinsic value, i.e., the real irreducible value of things, like houses, buildings, land, etc.)
We're running about 8% margin, just like 1929. Our system has not been able to control margin abuse.
Consider the plight of a Hedge Fund operator who has leveraged some market, then pumped and dumped it, and now has unwanted excess cash. He must join or create the next bubble so he can pump and dump again.
So the huge Hedge Funds leverage another market and create more diaphonous wealth.
And so it goes. A vicious cycle of ever-increasing bogus values. But no one can stand aside for fear of being left behind, so all must participate and hope their timing is good.
We have a gamblers choice between riches and ruin.