more at
http://quickfound.net/
"
Film describes events taking place after discovery of oil in
Williston Basin,
North Dakota."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Williston,_North_Dakota
Williston is a city in and the county seat of
Williams County, North Dakota,
United States. The
2010 census gave its population as 14,716, and the
Census Bureau gave the
2013 estimated population as 20,850, making Williston the sixth largest city in North Dakota.
The North Dakota oil boom is largely responsible for the sharp increase in population.
Founded in 1887, Williston was named for
Daniel Willis James, a board member of the
Northern Pacific Railroad Company, by his friend, railroad owner,
James J. Hill.
Williston's newspapers, both in print and online, are the daily
Williston Herald and the weekly The Williston Trader.
Sloulin Field International Airport is a public airport 3.2 km (
2.0 mi) north of the business district. Williston is the home of
Williston State College and the
Miss North Dakota Scholarship Pageant...
Economy
Williston's economy, while historically agricultural, is increasingly being driven by the oil industry. Williston lends its name to the Williston Basin, a huge subterranean geologic feature known for its rich deposits of petroleum, coal and potash. Williston sits atop the
Bakken formation, which by the end of
2012 was predicted to be producing more oil than any other site in the United States, surpassing even
Alaska's
Prudhoe Bay, the longtime leader in domestic output in the United States. Williston has seen a huge increase in population and infrastructure investments during the last several years with expanded drilling using the 'frac' petroleum extraction technique in the
Bakken Formation and
Three Forks Groups. (
The State of North Dakota provides a website detailing daily oil activity.) In
1995, the
U.S. Geological Survey estimated that there were
150 million barrels of oil "technically recoverable" from the Bakken shale. In
April 2008, the number was said to be about four billion barrels; in
2010 geologists at
Continental Resources, the major drilling operation in North Dakota, estimated the reserve at eight billion. In
March 2012, after the discovery of a lower shelf of oil, it announced a possible 24 billion barrels. Although current technology allows for extraction of only about 6% of the oil trapped 0.99–1.99 mi (1.6–3.2 km) beneath the earth's surface, recoverable oil might eventually exceed
500 billion barrels...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williston_Basin
The Williston Basin is a large intracratonic sedimentary basin in eastern
Montana, western North Dakota,
South Dakota, and southern
Saskatchewan, that is known for its rich deposits of petroleum and potash.
The basin is a geologic structural basin but not a topographic depression; it is transected by the
Missouri River. The oval-shaped depression extends approximately
475 miles (764 km) north-south and
300 miles (480 km) east-west.
The Williston Basin lies above an ancient
Precambrian geologic basement feature, the Trans-Hudson Orogenic
Belt that developed in this area about 1.8-1.9 billion years ago, and that created a weak zone that later led to sagging to produce the basin. The Precambrian basement rocks in the center of the basin beneath the city of
Williston, North Dakota lie about 16,
000 feet (4,900 m) below the surface...
Petroleum
The long history of sedimentary deposition in the Williston Basin included deposition of rocks well suited to serve as hydrocarbon source and reservoir rocks. The basin's oil and gas fields are found in a wide range of geologic ages, as indicated by the generalized stratigraphic column.
Oil was first found in the Williston Basin along the
Cedar Creek Anticline in southeastern Montana, in the
1920s and
1930s. The basin did not become a major oil province until the
1950s when large fields were discovered in North Dakota. Amerada, the largest independent oil firm, began the search in 1946. After four years of testing and mapping they started drilling at a promising lease 30 miles north-east of
Williston, ND and on April 4,
1951 found a large field of oil underground. Immediately other oil firms rushed in to buy up leases on farm land to explore for oil and by
1954 80% of the possible oil producing areas were under lease.
Shell at that time had leases over 8 million acres. Many local farmers and area speculators became instant millionaires, leasing land at an average of $25 an acre and then selling those leases back at a much higher cost per acre.
Production peaked in
1986, but in the early
2000s significant increases in production began because of application of horizontal drilling techniques, especially in the Bakken Formation.
Cumulative basin production totals about 3.8 billion barrels (600,000,000 m3) of oil and 470 billion cubic feet (1.3×1010 m3) of natural gas...
- published: 09 Jun 2015
- views: 2515