Rigzone: The Bakken Helping to Make up the Deficit Due to the Permitorium -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Link here. From the Rigzone:

A spill-related slowdown in the Gulf of Mexico could cut into oil production from the offshore basin for several years. But a number of emerging oil fields onshore, once thought out of reach, are helping the U.S. fill in the gap in the meantime.

Oil and gas companies, using techniques mastered in recent years to produce natural gas from shales and other dense rocks, are now having success extracting big quantities of oil from tight rock formations stretching from Texas to North Dakota.

A very nice article.

The Bakken shale, for instance, could hold more than 4 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil -- a 25-fold increase over what could be recovered in 1995, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Other emerging U.S. oil fields include the Granite Wash, from North Texas into Oklahoma.

That number -- 4 billion barrels -- probably includes both the Bakken formation and the Three Forks formation. Regardless, it's a huge number.

According to the Bismarck Tribune:

Bakken production had been just 13 million barrels until 2004 but jumped 191 million barrels since then, records show.

So, rounding, 200 million barrels so far from the Bakken. 4,000 million / 200 million = 20 years at current rates of production. Production is expected to increase significantly over the next few years however. But that fits the "Bakken analysis" which suggests new drilling will continue until 2030, and production from the Bakken will continue through 2100.

Harold Hamm, CLR/CEO opines there are 24 billion barrels of recoverable oil from the Bakken pool (Bakken and Three Forks formations).