Spearfish Oil: Sweet or Sour -- Still Confusing -- Bottineau County, North Dakota, USA

Lynn Helms, Director, NDIC, says North Dakota Spearfish oil is sour, yet a leading Canadian producer of Spearfish oil says Canadian Spearfish oil is "sweet." When you get to the latter link, click on the corporate presentation. The presentation will change over time, but the March 8, 2011, presentation, slide 14, clearly stated that Canadian Spearfish is sweet.

It's minimally important in the big scheme of things, I suppose, but one of the rationales for trucking Spearfish oil to Canada rather than putting it in Enbridge pipeline system is because Enbridge says it only wants to ship light, sweet oil.

My interest is piqued by all this due to Canada's Surge Energy/Corinthian Energy acquiring the Ritchie Spearfish wells in Bottineau.

For newbies: the lighter the oil, the better. Bakken oil is so light it can almost be used without refining.  Canadian sands oil is heavy. Sweet oil is preferred over sour oil. Sour oil contains sulfur which refiners must remove.  Bakken oil is sweet, and light.