Billions of barrels of untapped U.S. oil

[dkf]

An American oil boom: Nationwide there are a handful of shale oil fields that could contain as much as 17 billion barrels of oil, according to a recent study from IHS CERA. That's more than the country's largest oil field, Alaska's Prudhoe Bay.

"It's going to have a major impact on the United States reducing imports," Scott Sheffield, head of Pioneer Natural Resources Company, said Tuesday during a packed roundtable discussion on shale oil at CERA's annual energy conference in Houston.

Sheffield estimates that with the new technology, the country could produce an extra 2 million barrels a day from both the Bakken and from shale oil trapped in existing traditional oil fields.

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North Dakota State University estimates the oil workforce has gone from just over 5,000 in 2005 to over 18,000 in 2009.

Hamm said the industry now employs 30,000 in the state, and if production does hit a million barrels a day, it could employ over 100,000 people there.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/04/news/economy/oil_shale_bakken/index.htm