Billions of gallons of oil in North Dakota, Montana Geological Survey calls find largest reserves outside Alaska
A shale formation stretching North Dakota and Montana may have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, according to a U.S. Geological Survey assessment.
Known as the Bakken Formation, this find would make the recoverable oil in North Dakota and Montana the largest United States oil reserves outside Alaska.
The recently released assessment shows a 2,800 percent, or 28-times increase in the amount of oil recoverable from the Bakken Formation, compared to the agency’s 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.
According to the USGS, the dramatically increased estimate of recoverable oil in the Bakken Formation results from new geological models, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries.
By the end of 2007, approximately 105 million barrels of oil have been produced from the Bakken Foundation.
“The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest ‘continuous’ oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS,” said a news release making the announcement.