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Original Post
At slide 17, the USGS provides a graphic of the relative size of the various basins of continuous oil reservoirs, such as the Bakken, in the United States, to include Alaska. If one is trying to downplay the size of the Bakken, this is pretty successful.
Each basin/locality has a green "dot" varying in size based on the size of the reservoir. The USGS uses four dots to represent four "sizes":
- less than 0.1 billion bbls
- 0.1 to 0.5 billion bbls
- 0. 5 to 2.0 billion bbls
- greater than 2.0 billion bbls
Take a look at the graphic (slide 17 at the link). There is not a whole lot of difference in the size of the green "dots" for the Permian, the Western Gulf, and the Williston Basin. In fact, a newbie glancing quickly at this one slide would not be all that impressed with how much bigger the Williston Basin is compared to the Permian or the Western Gulf based on the graphic or the size of the dots.
But then look at the numbers:
- Permian Basin (Midland-Odessa): 0. 51 billion bbls
- Alaska North Slope (Prudhoe Bay): 0.94 billion bbls
- Western Gulf (Eagle Ford) Basin: 1.73 billion bbls
- Williston (Bakken/Three Forks) Basin: 7.38 billion bbls
Having said all that: my hunch is that the estimate for the Western Gulf (Eagle Ford) continuous reservoir is significantly underestimated, and will be revised upward in the next assessment.
If you compare the Williston Basin to the Permian Basin in that graphic, based on the proportions of the green dots the Williston would only have about 0.75 billion barrels of oil. Similarly, the smallest dot (the one labeled "0.01") has a diameter of 16px. If you started with that, and adjusted the other dots proportionally, the the dot for the Bakken would have a diameter of 11800px, which is more than 6 times larger than the width of the entire image (image size: 1862x1210 px).
ReplyDeleteI made a somewhat crude edit of the graphic to display the dots proportionally to the size of the resource. You can check it out here:
http://i.imgur.com/pdRjCZc.jpg
(Semi-trivial note: For a couple of the smallest dots I rounded the diameter up to the next integer even if the decimal was less than 0.5 just be cause the dots are hard enough to see as it is already. For example, the 3 "0.04" dots should have a diameter of 1.24px but I rounded it up to 2px.)
That is awesome. Thank you. I wanted to do that, but I did not have the know-how/wherewithal and had to let it go.
DeleteThat's the best graphic of the year. Thank you.
No problem. I thought I posted this earlier already but I guess I only hit the preview button. Here's an alternate version that I think I may like a little more.
ReplyDeletehttp://i.imgur.com/DU1xmIu.jpg
Thank you; I'll get it up as soon as possible. I have a really slow wi-fi connection right now; good excuse to go back to Starbucks (always a problem when I'm traveling).
DeleteAgain, thank you.
The reason it did not download initially, the "jpg" was actually "jpeg."
DeleteNow that I see the new version I wonder about the relative sizes of the circles. The Western Gulf (Eagle Ford) is 1.73 and the Williston Basin is 7.4 (or thereabouts). The ratio is about 4:1. The Williston Basin circle appears significantly larger than 4x the Western Gulf. I may be misinterpreting something, but it just seems larger than 4:1.
The circle for the Williston Basin on the second one has a diameter of 553px. (553*1.73)/7.38 = 129.6, so I gave the Western Gulf a diameter of 130px, and did it that way for the others as well.
DeleteGot it, thank you. I've posted that updated version.
Delete