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Page added on April 8, 2013
Art of the Anthropocene: The Bakken
The Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana has helped spark a “peak oil is dead” meme in the media and elsewhere. There are reasons to believe that this latest fad is as overblown as the peak oil frenzy was in the mid-2000s.
But one thing is clear: The Bakken is a big producer of oil. As of February, the formation was producing 673,015 barrels of black gold each and every day, making it one of the most productive oil regions in the United States.
And the official daily production may actually be underestimated. Some private estimates peg it at more than 800,000 barrels per day, with a million barrels coming in just a few years. Of course, that would just deplete the resource faster (and I haven’t even mentioned climate change). But I digress…
My point here is to show, with some help from a compelling graphic, that all that industrial activity is leaving its mark. It is, in fact, visible from space — at night. But I wanted to focus on something with greater aesthetic value.
A map of the Bakken formation. (Click to enlarge. Image: EERC)
The image at the top of this post shows a portion of the Bakken region in North Dakota, centered on the Missouri River. Captured by NASA’s Terra satellite on April 2, it’s in false color. (So relax, you’re not suffering a flashback.) It looks to me like a canvas, and another example of unintended Anthropocene art. The red is indicative of snow and ice. The Missouri River is visible snaking across the middle of the frame. And the thing that looks like a salamander is Lake Sakakawea, a reservoir.
Look to the north of the river and you’ll see a cross-hatching pattern etched into the red. These are north-south and east-west roads.
According to a story by Chip Brown in the New York Times Magazine, “A decade ago you could have spread a picnic blanket on a lot of back roads in western North Dakota and safely taken a nap.” Today if you tried that stunt you’d be flattened into a human pancake in no time. Every new well in the Bakken requires some 2,000 truck trips during its first year of operation. And by last count, there were 5,161 wells producing oil — up from just 193 ten years ago.
That’s a whole lot of trucks coursing up and down back roads.
The Bakken Formation is the largest continuous oil resource in the lower 48 states, according to the Energy and Environmental Research Center of the University of North Dakota. Given that, my guess is that concerns about climate change notwithstanding, we’re going to continue drilling the hell out of the Bakken. So don’t plan on picnicking on any North Dakota back roads this summer.
6 Comments on "Art of the Anthropocene: The Bakken"
J-Gav on Mon, 8th Apr 2013 10:34 pm
Oh no, it ain’t gonna be no picnic, that’s for sure, once people figure out they’ve been had by the hype, one more time … and hey, yeah! to hell with the climate and environment, right?
BillT on Tue, 9th Apr 2013 1:45 am
Funny, other articles say that the area is already in decline. As the best areas are already punched and bouncing along the bottom of production, how long do you expect this bubble to last? Another 5 years? How much destruction will it leave beyond to clean up? How much, what’s the word … externalities … were not counted in the cost of this oil? I’m talking about the things not counted in the cost of production like climate change, lose of water, landscape destruction, road damage, bridge damage, etc. Are these wells going to be pulled and the landscape restored? I doubt it. By that time the company that owns them will be bankrupt.
DC on Tue, 9th Apr 2013 1:58 am
Thats right, just the US corporations are turning Northern Alberta into a crated wasteland, they wont have to pay one dime to mitigate the damage the have,are, and will do before they are through. Same with that N.D place. Sparsely populated and not at all powerfully politically in the Us, it will be strip mined and left permanently scarred when its no long viable to try to suck that diffuse ‘oil’ out of the badlands.
Just like how mining companies left legacy environmental damage that is still being paid for today, and impossible to rectify in any event, the companies themselves, or rather the shell companies, declared bankruptcy in s loy of cases,decades ago, taking the profits with them and leaving the mess, and the bill, for future generations to pay.
Think its going to be different in the ‘bakken’?
Plantagenet on Tue, 9th Apr 2013 2:26 am
Obama promised millions of good paying green jobs, but he was lying. Back here in the real world, there are a whole lotta people earning good money in the Bakken.
BillT on Tue, 9th Apr 2013 3:54 pm
There are a whole lot of greedy assholes, yes. But their day is coming and it won’t be pretty.
econ101 on Tue, 9th Apr 2013 10:49 pm
Production is getting another shot in the arm through private development of shipping infrastructure. Truck/rail and pipeline facilities are all under construction with private capital.
Prodution has been limited to about 600,000BPD plus storage because of shipping limitations.
Right now shipping matches production and lots of private projects are coming on line assuring a surplus shipping capacity and the ability to produce a lot more.
The geographical area with rich oil resources is growing both vertically and horizontally. Right now there are several horizontally stacked payzones each as wealthy as the other.
Technology is developing fast, and the shale is responding to applications that better drain the 100 foot thick plus payzones speading out to the horizon.