In Saskatchewan and North Dakota, I saw the development efforts that are going on in the Bakken Formation. The Bakken is a rock formation within the Williston Basin, a sedimentary basin covering parts of three states and two provinces. The Williston Basin contains a vast wedge of sediments as much as 15,000 feet thick in some places.
The Bakken itself is one of several hydrocarbon-bearing formations within the Williston Basin. But the Bakken reaches a maximum thickness of only about 150 feet. In fact, it’s even thinner in most areas.
The best understanding of the Bakken Formation is that it is both a “source rock” for hydrocarbons, as well as an oil and gas reservoir. That is, over millions of years, organic matter accumulated in the sediments and became chemically altered by heat and pressure. All of this produced oil and gas. Now the oil and gas have collected within the sedimentary beds of the Bakken. But it’s tricky to get them out. It requires directional drilling and subsurface “fracturing” to break up the shale and release the hydrocarbons.
Wells in the Bakken Formation are not easy to drill, and they are not cheap. Yet on my travels, I saw at least a dozen working drilling rigs. I saw many dozens of brand-new oil wells with the pump jacks still breaking in. The roads of Saskatchewan and North Dakota were clogged with literally hundreds of trucks hauling rig components and drilling supplies.
Investment is moving into the Bakken play, what with the high prices for oil in the last few years. I spoke with farmers who described years of toughing it out on the hard prairies, followed by recent lease payments in the millions of dollars.
And there’s a human migration going on as workers from all over North America travel to this exciting new energy patch to take jobs that can pay over $100,000 per year. But if you are thinking of going, take your fur-lined underwear – they drill year-round, and in winter, the temperatures have been known to get down to 60 below.
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