Government Energy Policy, Business and Technology

USGS Reserves Assessment is about Technology, not Resources

Energy Policy Information Center: Yesterday, the USGS released its new assessment of reserves in North Dakota’s Bakken oil formation—doubling its last estimates (published in 2008) from 3.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil to 7.4 b, and tripling its gas estimates from 1.8 trillion cubic feet to 6.7 tcf. It’s easy to look at these numbers and say U.S. reserves estimates are good, and keep getting better. But the big caveat is that this report contains an entire geographic area—the Three Fork Formation—which was not included in the 2008 estimates because of doubts about whether any of the resource was recoverable. From the U.S. Geological Survey/Department of Interior press release:

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