Busting The “Canadian Bakken” Myth
The financial pages of Canadian newspapers have been full of headlines lately announcing the potential of two large shale oil fields in the Northwest Territories said to contain enough oil to rival the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and Montana.
The report by Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) evaluated, for the first time, the volume of oil in place for the Canol and Bluefish shale formations, located in the territory’s Mackenzie Plain. It found the “thick and geographically extensive” Canol formation is expected to contain 145 billion barrels of oil, while the “much thinner” Bluefish shale contains 46 billion barrels.
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The report did not estimate the amount of recoverable oil, but points out that even if one percent of the Canol resource could be recovered, that represents 1.45 billion barrels. The calculation immediately had reporters comparing Canol and Bluefish to the Bakken, where the latest USGS estimate shows 7.4 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil (this includes the Three Forks Formation underlying the Williston Basin straddling North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba).
“Northwest Territories sitting on massive shale oil reserves on par with booming Bakken field in U.S.,” enthused the Financial Post. “NEB and GNWT study finds 200 billion barrels of oil in the Sahtu,” gushed CBC News, referring to a region of the sprawling territory that cuts across three provinces and touches the Arctic Ocean.
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