Owen Price

Michael Myers
Prop 237
12 February 2016
Oil boom is over
North Dakota lies over a great deposit of oil which is called Bakken shale formation. The
bakken occupies about 200,000 square miles within the Williston basin which may be the largest
oil reservoir since the Alaska Prudhoe bay. The earliest wells drilled in bakken started in the
1950s. In 2008 the Bakken grow in popularity and oil rigs started drill for oil. In 2014 the oil
price dropped and so did the rigs numbers. Price of oil a barrel was at 60 dollars. and now it is at
$27. This big difference in price lead to fall of bakken. In the bakken, oil rigs relies on horizontal
drilling and fracking to retrieve oil. These methods are expensive and which lead the rigs to back
out because they could not make a profit.
The United States use about 19,106 thousand barrels of oil a day in 2014. EIA estimates
that global oil inventories increased by 1.8 million in 2015, marking the second consecutive year
of strong inventory builds. EIA expects global consumption of petroleum and other liquid fuels
to continue to grow by 1.2 million in 2016 and by 1.5 million in 2017. The major use of crude oil
is for transportation fuel, fuel oils for heating, electricity generation, road oil, and feed stock used
to make chemicals or plastics. About 76% of the barrels of oil used in United States in 2014 were
used for gasoline, diesel, heating oil and jet fuels. The other 24 % were used in feed stock for
chemicals or plastic.

In America we use about 96 million barrels of oil and liquid fuels per day. We produce
about 97 million barrels per day as of late 2015. That is one millions of barrels of oil extra a day
that is not getting consumed. United States plan of importing about 4.5 million to 4.8 million of
barrels of oil in a day by 2035. There is a lot of talk going about American exporting fuel since
we still import fuels. I feel like America shouldnt be exporting or importing oils. As of
exporting goes I feel like if we do not have the storage for it then its alright to export it. In
America we regulate the refinerys so much do to emissions and the scared of globule warming.
If American wants to import oil the oil refinery overseas should have to be regulated too to make
sure they are making a difference on the carbon foot print.
OPEC is Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. OPEC was created in at the
Baghdad Conference on September 10 14, 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and
Venezuela. Later joined by another 4 countries. OPEC was created to unify oil policies among
Member Countries. This would a make sure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers and a
fair capital on those who invested in return.
Im enjoining this cheaper oil. As a college student, the falling gas prices allow me to
have more of an open budget. I was never a big fan of the oil boom due to the increase of
criminal activity and the mass amounts of people that came for the oil boom. Its nice seeing
North Dakota slow down. On the other hand as going to school for process plant the falling oil
prices does not help out for looking for a job. With massive amounts of layoffs lead to a lot more
people looking for jobs which we have to compete with.
Through this paper we discussed the bakken booms, production and globule use of oil. I
feel like this is a phasing we are going through and oil is going to go up again. History is bound

to repeat itself as it has in the past. With technology always evolving I feel like they are going to
find a way to extracted oil for the fraction of the cost and making a profit in this poor oil market.

http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/24.htm
https://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=5&aid=2
http://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/north-dakota-williston-basin/
https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/global_oil.cfm
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=41&t=6
https://www.iea.org/aboutus/faqs/oil/