USGS to Assess oil Production in North Dakota

DICKINSON, N.D. (AP) — The U.S. Geological Survey plans to assess areas within North Dakota's booming oil patch next year to see how much oil and gas is being produced.

The USGS assessment will look at the Bakken and Three Forks formations within the Williston Basin so it can estimate the "undiscovered recoverable resources" in the oil fields.

Stephanie Gaswirth is the USGS task chief of the Williston Basin assessment. She tells The Dickinson Press (http://bit.ly/HpZVeO ) that the USGS did not study the Three Forks formations in its 2008 assessment.

The 2008 study estimated that North Dakota and Montana had 3 to 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Bakken Formation.

But Vicky Steiner with the North Dakota Association of Oil and Gas Producing Counties says officials believe those numbers are too low.

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Information from: The Dickinson Press, http://www.thedickinsonpress.com

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

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