I've posted articles about Richard Findley before, but a reader sent in this link -- one I had not seen before. Too good to pass up. Enjoy.
Federal and state agencies tracking exploration also considered the region a bust. "I thought my job was going to be turning out the lights," says Jim Halvorson, geologist for Montana's Board of Oil and Gas Conservation. In 2000, his office predicted oil production would rapidly decline toward zero.That was back in 2006, just five years ago, and the Bakken just seems to get bigger and bigger.
But Richard L. Findley, a graying geologist and "wildcat" producer, thought they were all wrong. He bought up leases on the cheap and helped spark a surprising boom in one of the most heavily explored oil regions in the country.
Mr. Findley discovered a new field that is now producing 48,000 barrels a day of high-quality crude oil from more than 300 wells. While oil companies have discovered bigger fields in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, this sizeable find is now the highest-producing onshore field found in the lower 48 states in the past 56 years, according to the U.S. Energy Department.
The high price of oil, coupled with the call to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, has sparked debate among policy makers, executives and entrepreneurs about just how much untapped oil is still out there in the continental U.S., where it is, and how to get it. Hurricane damage last summer to vast U.S. oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico heightened interest in onshore fields.
