Interesting. Looked at the Web sites for the newspapers in Fargo, Grand Forks and Bismarck; only Bismarck had a recent story about this. A story on
MSN says there's 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
Having been to North Dakota several times, the good news is there aren't a lot of people there, and even fewer environmental activists, so if the surveys prove true, it would be nice for the U.S. to be less dependent on Middle Eastern oil.
Of course, part of the reserve lies in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, so Darth Cheney is probably already thinking about invading Canada.