Saturday, September 23, 2006
CONTACT: Barry E. Piatt
or Brenden Timpe
PHONE: 202-224-2551
DORGAN WELCOMES MARATHON OIL TO NORTH DAKOTA, ENCOURAGES EXPANSION OF BAKKEN SHALE DEVELOPMENT
Senator says Bakken Shale could boost North Dakota energy sector, U.S. energy independence:
(DICKINSON, NORTH DAKOTA) --- U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) visited the offices of Marathon Oil in Dickinson Friday to welcome the company back to North Dakota and encourage them to widen their development of North Dakota’s Bakken Shale oil field. Dorgan has worked to encourage oil companies to explore the formation in the Williston Basin, which according to some estimates could hold more oil than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Prudhoe Bay combined.
Dorgan said the development of the Bakken Shale formation is important to the Dickinson region and North Dakota’s growing energy industry, and could play a key role in reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign sources of oil.
“We welcome Marathon Oil’s return to North Dakota,” Dorgan said. “If some of the estimates of the Bakken Shale are accurate, we have significant oil reserves in western North Dakota that would be a boost to our growing energy sector and help eliminate America’s dependence on foreign oil. I will continue to push the U.S. Geological Survey to finalize its report on the Bakken Shale so Marathon and other companies can further develop this important resource.”
Dorgan has held discussions with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) on what the agency needs to complete its review of a report on the Bakken Shale oil field in western North Dakota, and when the work might be finished. A USGS scientist, Dr. Leigh Price, studied the untapped reserve in the Williston Basin in 1999 and 2000 but died before the study was fully completed and peer-reviewed.
Dorgan – the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, which funds USGS – said that initial estimates in Dr. Price’s work indicate that the Bakken Shale could hold between 200 and 400 billion barrels of oil, and that the release of the study would give the oil industry and investors an important new estimate of what resources the region may contain.
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