by Tim Mccardle

Created on: June 28, 2008

I don't know if there are any truth to the rumors floating around the internet about the Bakken Oil Formation in North Dakota, Montana, and other western states and Canada. If anything that I've read is true, America's reliance on foriegn oil should come to and end within a decade! I'm very skeptical about this in many ways.

Anyway, if you've never heard of it, the Bakken is a giant mass of oil in the American and Canadian west. It is estimated at up to 503 billion barrels. This would be much larger than Saudi Arabia's largest oil field! This formation has been known to geologists for over 20 years, but extraction has been all but impossible because the oil is somehow layered with shale rock.

The rumors that I refer to claim that new horizontal drilling techniques have made this virtual motherlode accessible. There are even sites out there urging people to get in early with certain companies that are drilling in this area before it hits the mainstream media and skyrockets in stock price. I've done some research, and there are definetly companies drilling in this area. I don't know yet if there will be an oil explosion as these rumors insists. This sounds like a tempting investment opportunity or a scam on the American people by a small group trying to drive up stock values.

These rumors claim that this is light sweet crude which is the most easily refinable and thus most valuable type of oil. They also claim that this oil can be extracted for as little as $16 dollars a barrel. This all sounds too good to be true to this skeptic. However, I'd be lying if I said that I was not looking into investment opportunities related to this oil play. The reason that I'm interested is that I've heard of the shale oil in the west for years, and if the technology exists then we may be able to solve our dependence on foriegn oil within about ten years! This would be one of the largest oil deposits in the world!

If the Bakken oil deposits can be exploited immediatly(I'm not so sure this is possible) then it would be an economic boon to the United States. It would also make an incalculable impact on our national security. There would be no strategic area of the world that we constantly have to police because the local residents cannot stop antagonizing each other and Israel. This would free the U.S. Armed Forces to do what they do best, and that is keeping order in the free world(through deterence) and defending American soil while planning for the conflicts of the future that might actually threaten America(i.e.China).

Even if everything is true about these oil deposits it will still present us with another dilemma. Although I am a capitalist, I think that a deposit this important needs to do more than enrich people. We are in the midst of destroying this planet, and if this oil is really extractable at $16 a barrel then we need to use some of the ridiculous amount of money that it will generate and make a real attempt at making our world a sustainable place for our descendants to inhabit.

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