“The challenge is getting the oil out. Bakken crude is locked 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) underground in a layer of dolomite, a dense mineral that doesn’t surrender oil the way more-porous limestone does. The dolomite band is narrow, too, averaging just 22 feet (7 meters) in North Dakota.

… For decades, the Bakken was the fool’s gold of the oil industry. The name describes a geological formation that looks like an Oreo cookie: two layers of black shale that bleed oil into the middle layer of dolomite. It’s named after Henry O. Bakken, the North Dakota farmer who owned the land where the first drilling rig revealed the shale layers in the 1950s.

All of the layers are thin — about 150 feet altogether — and none of them give up oil easily. In older, vertical wells, oil would often flow for a month and then fizzle.

Now, companies like Austin, Texas-based Brigham Exploration Co.; Denver-based Whiting Petroleum Corp.; and EOG are drilling horizontally. They go straight down 10,000 feet and then put a slight angle in the mud motor, a 30-foot piece of tubing that drives the bit, so they hit the Bakken sideways, making a horizontal tunnel 4,500 feet long through the dolomite.

That exposes more of the oil-bearing rock. Then they pump pressurized water and sand into the hole to fracture the dolomite, making cracks for oil to seep through.

… It drilled a horizontal well in western North Dakota just north of Parshall — population 1,028 — in April 2006. The well came online a month later and kicked out 1,883 barrels in the first seven days. Unlike the older vertical wells, it’s still going. In March, it produced 2,305 barrels, according to the North Dakota Industrial Commission. {FM note: the well initially produced 270 b/day; output dropped by 70% over two years to 74 b/day}

… The Bakken isn’t foolproof. Far from it. Drilling there is expensive — about $5 million a well, according to EOG — and takes experience. Dallas-based Petro-Hunt’s first well in the North Dakota Bakken didn’t make money, company geologist Steve Bressler says. Brigham’s Bergstrom Family Trust well came online at 277 barrels a day — viable at today’s high oil prices but not a gusher.

It must be understood that the government report relied on flawed methodology about how much oil was recoverable and it never attempted to measure the total amount of oil in the ground. Now I have unfortunately misplaced by tin foil hat, so I won’t begin to speculate on why this was so. All I do know is that Shell and Marathon, two majors looking to cash in are anxiously looking for opportunities here. In addition, the property clerks’ offices in ND and Montana have been overrun by oil men looking to identify and buy up leases. If Exxon or Chevron decide to forgo this play, then one must wonder why.
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Fabius Maximus replies: What specific conclusions do you take issue with? This is not clear to me from your comment. You do not seem to address any of my key points. Esp the relevance of flows over reserves for unconventional resources.
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Your last paragraph is esp irrelevant to my post. I never said or implied that folks could not make money exploiting these fields, just that these fields have minimal significance on the national and global levels.

Before the rancid, parasitic libtards had to make a real effort to spew their inane nonsense…

My biggest concern is that we all spend too much time on the internet. A virtual community is not really a community at all, and blathering and shouting back and forth with someone in North Dakota is not the same as getting your neighbor to vote for a local school bond.