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Cadillac Forums: Found in North Dakota - 100-300 billion barrels of oil
Re: Found in North Dakota - 100-300 billion barrels of oil
"The next time I talk is up in Regina (Sask.) in April at the petroleum conference, and I have one scheduled for the Rocky Mountain Association of Petroleum Geologists in October. So it's a variety of things anything we can do to get the information out. Most of those talks and that information is on our web site, so the ones that can't make it can at least log online and see what's out there."
LeFever said the survey's goal is to keep people informed as to what's going on.
"We have a list of clients that come here and use the core facility that I talk to on a fairly regular basis that attend these meetings," she said. "They're actively drilling the basin, so it's not uncommon to get a specific question like 'What do you think is going on here?' and 'Do you happen to have a sample of rock from that area?' We just try to provide information, and it comes back to the state as revenue hopefully.
NDGS subscription service
LeFever said the NDGS provides a subscription service to keep interested parties informed via the Internet.
"One thing we do as part of our subscription service is we've been photographing these core samples and making it available to our users online," she said. "And the product has been very well-received. Although it won't substitute for somebody actually coming in and physically looking at the rock, it will give them a first glance if that's what they want to see.
"We have five (University of North Dakota) students here who are currently doing the core photography and doing the thin section photography. It's kind of slick, because what the viewer does it was designed by one of our fellows in-house in Bismarck is it takes all of our images that we're creating in the back image-by-image, six inches at a time, and puts it all into a vertical view of the core on the side. And they can get a complete image of the core itself, and if they want to look at something similar up close, they can pull it up on the side screen and they can print it, put it into their project or whatever they need to use it for. It gives them a real quick overview.
"The other thing that we're doing is they have thin sections that companies have made, and not everybody has access to a microscope, so they're not always able to look at it. We check out our thin sections (like library books), but if they don't have a scope, it doesn't do them any good. So what we've done is set up this program and we're taking representative photos so that now instead of having to check out our thin sections, they can view them online. They still may have to check them out, but it gives you real quickly what a fine-grained rock we're dealing with with the Bakken.
"The other thing they do to these rocks is when they make the thin sections, which are 4 microns thick, they first put the chip of rock into a vacuum and set the chip of rock into a blue dye cement, and it sucks the blue up into the rock and fills in the void so that you can tell where you've got porosity. From that, geologists can take this information and hopefully put it into their model. Everything is done with the idea that they'll use it to drill wells within the state. And it seems to be working. There's a lot of pressure on some of the other states to actually do the same thing to their collections.
"North Dakota has been very proactive, and I think it attracts a lot of business for us, because we are (collecting). If the data's available and easy to get to, they're more likely to come and drill in the state. We have a lot of comments come back to us that they like working here because the data's so easily accessible. They pay for it, but it's not difficult to get a hold of.
LeFever said that she estimates that the NDGS currently has about 85,000 thin section photos available for viewing.
A trained eye for detail
LeFever said that a trained expert can learn a lot from examining rocks from a geological formation.
"After you look at them for a while, geologists can differentiate other things than just the gross changes," she said. "There's a lot of small, subtle changes that will occur within a certain section that the trained eye will pick up on, and they'll come in and look at them.
"Basically, you have a bunch of pieces and you're putting together a puzzle. So you have a well here that may have cut a core, then you have a well a few towns over that cut a core, and you're trying to interpret what those rocks are doing in between. And the more cores you have, the better that interpretation is going to be and the more complete the puzzle's going to be. It gets really intriguing.
"But the interesting thing with the Bakken, it's virtually the same everywhere. You have subtle variations, but I did a paper a few years ago with a group from Manitoba and a group from Saskatchewan, and we had cores laid out from all three areas and the same units were there.
"The Bakken is very, very uniform. The processes that were acting at the time it was being deposited was basin-wide. That's the thing that's a little more unique, that it's that widespread. And the more we know about it, the better off we are, and hopefully the more we know about it, the better we can get a handle on what it takes to drill it. That's why it always goes back to the rocks. The company geologists always have to come back in. A photograph only tells them so much. It may get them started, but it only tells them so much.
"A normal core they cut is 41/2 inches in diameter, and the state gets a portion of that. Usually we get what they call 'the butts.' The good part about that is you can do extra tests on it and still have something left.
The Bakken rock is roughly 360 million years old, she said. That's way before the dinosaurs were roaming around.
The core library has a laboratory on site, and LeFever said that people from all over the world have been in contact regarding usage of the facility.
"We ask that they to book ahead, so we know that they have table space. A lot of them like to be the only ones in, again for confidential status. We have a camera set up that they can use.
"Also, when we get the cores in that have not been 'slabbed,' usually from the smaller operators, we have the ability to cut them. You always see more in a core if it's slabbed versus simply pulled. Our slab saw cuts 3 feet at a time. It's fully automated, and we tend to baby it because the last I knew, its blades were running at about $1,200. So it cuts very slowly. And on a good blade, we can get about 55,000 feet of cut."
That's a lot of rocks
The core library warehouse itself is a sprawling room that looks like it would be comfortable holding jumbo jets.
"It's 18,000 square feet and I would guess about 18 feet high," LeFever said while looking skyward at the top of a massive shelving system holding literally thousands of boxes of rock samples.
"The first eight shelves are cores, the top two shelves are cuttings. The state requires cuttings from any well drilled in the state, unless there's some extenuating circumstance. Whether it's a development well or an exploratory well will determine where they start collecting those samples. If we request samples and they cut a core they're not required by state law to cut a core they are required to turn it in to us. We usually get half the core, usually the butts. We would prefer all of it, but most companies will hang on to a portion of it until they're done. They know that once they're done with it, say 10 years down the road, we'll take that sample. If it keeps it from going into the landfill, it's better to come here, because you never know what technology's around the bend and what new exploration technique might be used on old rocks.
"The more complete our collection, the better off we are. We have acquired a number of collections as companies close their own personal core facilities down, they will turn around and ask us if we want them. We'll take their samples provided they pay for the shipping and stuff. In the past, we've received Amerada's, we've received Shell's, we received Marathon's. That's kind of an ongoing process. That's all in part in a nationwide effort to take care of this stuff. Because once it's drilled, once it's cut, once it goes to the landfill, you're never going to drill and cut the same section again.
"So if you laid all of this head-to-head, we figure there's about 75 miles of core currently housed in this facility."
LeFever says the exact number of cuttings boxes escaped her "it's in the hundred thousands" but that there were about 115,000 thin sections that had been turned in to the office. She said the facility also houses water well samples, landfill samples, a few dinosaur bones that belong to the department, missile silo samples and some shallow exploration holes for cement rock and minerals "just kind of a whole variety of things. We try not to turn anything away if possible."
She said the core library is computerized just like a normal library.
"It's just like you walk into a library and you type in a title or an author," she said. "Here we can type in a license number or a well name, and find the shelf location and pull the exact core."
She said that a project to rebox the samples in order to stack them more efficiently, thus adding about 20 years to the life of the building. She said that the average box probably weighs about 30-40 pounds.
It's a source of pride for LeFever and rightfully so.
"We are probably one of the most complete facilities, if not the most complete facility, in the U.S.," she said. "And the reason I say that is because a lot of our oil and gas regulations were in place when oil was discovered, so we have wells that instead of having 30 years or 40 years of drilling activity with wells going to the landfills or into the mud pits, they were required before the drilling ever started. So we've got wells that go back before oil was discovered in the state.
"We're very complete in our collection."
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Re: Found in North Dakota - 100-300 billion barrels of oil
There are 100s of billions of barrels of oil all over the world that are not economically recoverable with todays technology; Colorado shale, Athabascan shale, Atahabascan tar sands, Alaska heavy crude and oil sands. This North Dakota thing is nothing new. It just happened to make it back onto the radar screen and I'll bet there is some kind of promotion scheme behind it because the high price of crude is in the news. Fifty years ago there was talk of detonating nuclear explosions under goround to release oil from shale. These formations get rediscovered periodically as the price of crude goes up and down and the promotion schemes come and go.
Re: Found in North Dakota - 100-300 billion barrels of oil
Frankly... we, as a country need to sh!t or get off the pot.
We keep hearing that there's all of this potentially recoverable oil at out fingertips, yet the technology "might not be there yet." Aren't we supposed to be the most technologically advanced nation in the history of mankind? Maybe... just maybe, if we started spending just a fraction of what we're currently spending on any number of useless endeavors, we could surely get the technology "there" awfully quick. Then again.. it doesn't help that we seem to be in bed with a lot of people whose interests trend against the common welfare of the US... it also doesn't help that no one currently in power gives two craps that gas is inching towards $4 a gallon.
And now... even if the technology is there, we can't drill these sites because the rigs have gotten entirely too expensive? What the hell? We hand out subsidies for this, that, and everything else... why can't we subsidize these rigs at least for exploratory drilling?
Something's seriously got to give and we really need to start spending some serious money to find solutions. We have no problem throwing millions and billions of dollars at things which provide zilch to the common good of this country... so we should have no problem throwing the same at something which would benefit 300+ million Americans, and by extension - the rest of the world. In reality, we should be spending massive amounts on alternative sources such a fuel cells... on the cells itself, on the storage of hydrogen, and most importantly on the infrastructure needed to service such... but that's too outrageous of a proposition because it would put the oil companies on the endangered species list (and that's only because they're too stupid to realize that the first one to truly capitalize on such an infrastructure will become the richest company the world has ever seen.)
But if we're going to pretend to be incapable of doing such a thing... then we need pull out all the stops when it comes to domestic oil production. We need to drill more in Alaska... we need to get the technology up to snuff with regard to shale and tar sands... and we need to subsidize the research and subsequent drilling in places like North Dakota.
Our massive thirst for oil, especially foreign oil is this country's achilles heel... we might have been able to juggle it for a while longer, but our actions over the past several years have caused consequences which have made such a juggling act all but impossible. This is by far the biggest, most threatening problem this country has ever faced... far greater than the Civil War... far greater than the Great Depression... and far greater than terrorism. There's only one even bigger problem we need to overcome first..
And it's only going to get worse the longer we wait. We're damn near at $4 a gallon... our dollar is dropping as quickly as our debt is increasing... and we still remain largely indifferent to it all. It will be our own apathy... our own indifference as a population which will ultimately bring us down. But no one ever wants to admit that our current situation is no ones fault but our own.
Re: Found in North Dakota - 100-300 billion barrels of oil
As a resident of Grand Forks Air Force Base and Rural Emerado for over 5 years (when I was younger) I am confident that no one will be smart enough to use this resource.
Afterall why spoil the untamed beauty that is North Dakota!
All kidding aside, I am sure some tree hugging peacenick will find a way to stop any advancement they could make out there to really help anyone.
They always do.
__________________ Views expressed by the author of this post do not necessarily represent those of the Lindsay Automotive Group.
Re: Found in North Dakota - 100-300 billion barrels of oil
No offense to any of my neighboring North Dakotians..but, honestly, a bunch of oil wells would actually IMPROVE the landscape of North Dakota.
Regardless, and I've been accused more than once of being a "grassy knolls" kind of person, but I don't think there will be any new exploration for a while, mostly because there a lot of people making a LOT of money from the current "oil crisis" and the people with the money also have the most power.
--Automobile Magazine, May 2004
