Saturday, March 20, 2010

Overview and Background of the Oil Industry in North Dakota

Overview of the Petroleum Geology of the North Dakota Williston Basin, Thomas J. Heck, Richard D. LeFever, David W. Fischer, Julie LeFever, 1994. This is an excellent summary. Particularly well developed is the discussion of the four (4) cycles of oil exploratory drilling. The current boom is the fifth cycle and is not covered in this history.

Overview of the Bakken, current, North Dakota Geological Survey.

Geo News: North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, January, 2010, Volume 31, Number 1.

Short history of the Bakken, undated, but appears to be September, 2004, by Julie LeFever. This is an important article since it was published just about the time the Bakken in Montana was reaching its peak and interest was moving to North Dakota Bakken. A great article (as all articles by Ms LeFever are).

*****

If one could turn back time!


If I Could Turn Back Time, Cher

I love the US Navy.

3 comments:

  1. I have been reading your blog for about a year. There seems to be lots of hype about drilling and rigs. THIS IS ONLY PART OF THE STORY. Well finishing and or fracking seems to be at the heart of the boom. Fracking seems to be evolving and production potentials keep creeping up. WHO ARE THE PLAYERS. Are there any local frackers or are they all multinational. Who is on the leading edge of the evolving methods.

    PAUL HAUGAN

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are correct; it takes about 74 companies to drill a well in the Bakken; I've posted that earlier. I'll try to find and re-post it.

    Schlumberger, Halliburton, and Sanjel are three of the bigger names involved in fracking. But there are many, many others. Early on in my blog I talked about the huge investment HAL was making in the Williston area, but haven't revisited the topic. I also need to post a story about ceramics / proppants used in fracturing. Just too much to do.

    The EPA recently requested information from nine (9) service companies involved in fracking. I will try to find a meaningful list of fracking companies and post it.

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  3. Here are the major players involved in fracking, courtesy of the EPA (how helpful). From the EPA website:

    On September 9, [2010,] EPA reached out to nine leading national and regional hydraulic fracturing service providers -- BJ Services; Complete Production Services; Halliburton; Key Energy Services; Patterson-UTI; RPC, Inc.; Schlumber; Superior Well Services; and, Weatherford -- seeking information on the chemical composition of fluids used in the hydraulic fracturing process, data on the impacts of the chemicals on human health and the environment, standard operating procedures at their hydraulic fracturing sites and the locations of sites where fracturing has been conducted.

    Of all those listed, I am aware of Halliburton and Schlumberger in the Bakken. I believe BJ Services is there. I think I've seen Weatherford there, but these nine (plus Sanjel) would be in the Marcellus, the Bakken, Eagle Ford, etc.

    ReplyDelete

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