I did a search on Bakken starting with Wikipedia and apparently the info below is true. How it has remained silent during this period of oil costing up to $150 a barrel is puzzling unless it’s true about the Democrats stonewalling.

You don’t even have to check with Snopes to see if this is true…Just put in ‘Bakken Formation’ on GOOGLE and stand by for the load of info that will descend on you! Snopes is somewhat evasive in a response.

1. Ever heard of the Bakken Formation?

The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April (’08) that only scientists and oilmen/women knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn’t been updated since ‘95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota; western South Dakota; and extreme eastern Montana … check THIS out:

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable… at $107 a barrel, we’re looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.

‘When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.’ says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature’s financial analyst.

‘This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years,’ reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It’s a formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the ‘Bakken.’ And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada . For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the ‘Big Oil’ companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken’s massive reserves… and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!

That’s enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight.

2. [And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from TWO YEARS AGO, people!]

U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World! Stansberry Report Online - 4 /20/2006 Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction.

They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:

-8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
-18-times as much oil as Iraq
-21-times as much oil as Kuwait
-22-times as much oil as Iran
-500-times as much oil as Yemen - and it’s all right here in the Western United States.

HOW can this BE!? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this!? Because the democrats and leftwing republicans have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil.

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we’ve got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels. Untapped. That’s more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post

Don’t think ‘OPEC’ will drop its price - even with this find? Think again! It’s all about the competitive marketplace, - it has to.
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Got your attention/ire up yet? Hope so! Now, while you’re thinking about it … and hopefully P.O’d, do this:

3. Take 10 minutes and compose an e-mail; fax or good old-fashioned letter to all your friends and associates. Alert them to the fact that democrats and ‘liberal’ republicans have been and will continue to obstruct all plans to make America independent of foreign oil. The only solution is to vote all democrats and Marxist oriented republicans out of office.

If you don’t take a little time to do this, then you should stifle yourself the next time you want to complain about gas prices .. because by doing NOTHING, you’ve forfeited your right to complain.

I received this via email today and did do the Google search, maybe it’s time we raise so much hell that Congress and the Senate start thinking that we’re going to vote them out if this is not pursued, might be a good idea too!

HOUSTON (AP) - Hurricane Ike appears to have destroyed a number of production platforms and damaged some of the pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico, federal officials said Sunday.

Fly-overs revealed that at least 10 production platforms were destroyed by the storm, said Lars Herbst, regional director for the U.S. Minerals Management Service.

“It’s too early to say if it’s close to Katrina- and Rita-type damage,” Herbst said.

There are about 3,800 production platforms in the Gulf, including 717 with full-time staffs aboard.

The MMS says Hurricane Katrina destroyed 44 platforms three years ago, and soon after Hurricane Rita destroyed 64.

Herbst stressed the assessments were preliminary, but the damage appeared far worse than that caused by Hurricane Gustav two weeks ago.

Full Story Here:
Ike destroys a number of Gulf platforms

Ladies and Gentlemen, get ready for it, it IS coming, the BIG OIL price gouge is on the way and there’s not a thing we can do about it either.

The Feds are already saying that they are going to police price gouging and it will not be allowed, HERE but I have to wonder, does that policy apply only to individual service stations that are taking advantage of the consumer or will it apply to the bigger picture? The one where BIG OIL sees an opportunity to take us for a ride and get their platforms rebuilt on our dime?

The article says that at least 10 platforms have been destroyed by IKE. Now I’m thinking that the above story basically says we’re suppose to prepare for serious supply problems and disruption as such. I’m NOT a mathematics professor, but even if IKE destroyed as many as 38 platforms, that is only 1% of ALL production platforms. If a 1% disruption gives us that much grief, I would think it may be prudent to station military protection of ALL offshore production platforms. Looks like a huge set of viable, and readily accessible targets to me.

If a 1% destruction is going to cause the massive and immediate rise in prices that we are seeing all over the USA right now, God help us if our enemies ever figure out that oil platforms are a more important target than the WTC Towers and the Pentagon were.

Folks, the oil companies are going to gouge US to pay for the repairs on their equipment, US, as in you and me, the consumer, that is a fact. The federal government is not going to stop them either. The federal government is too far into the pockets OF the big oil companies, and the feds are NOT going to cut off their noses to spite their faces. The only hope we have is to replace ALL of our Senators and Congresscritters with fresh and hopefully not as yet corrupted faces, and to make those fresh faces fully aware, you CAN and WILL be replaced if you don’t set this nation back on the straight and narrow!

You can bet that our current batch of law makers won’t do it, if they had ANY intentions of doing so, it would have already been done.

HOUSTON (AP) — Exxon Mobil reported second-quarter earnings of $11.68 billion Thursday, the biggest quarterly profit ever by any U.S. corporation, but the results fell well short of Wall Street expectations and shares fell in premarket trading.

The world’s largest publicly traded oil company said net income for the April-June period came to $2.22 a share, up from $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 40 percent to $138.1 billion from $98.4 billion in the year-earlier quarter.

Excluding an after-tax charge of $290 million related to an Exxon Valdez court settlement, earnings amounted to $11.97 billion, or $2.27 per share.

Full Story Here:
ExxonMobil Breaks Profit Record

DETROIT (AP) - General Motors Corp. said Friday its losses widened to $15.5 billion in the second quarter as North American sales plummeted and the company faced expenses due to labor unrest and its massive restructuring plan.

The loss of $27.33 per share is the third-worst quarterly loss in the automaker’s history. In the same period a year earlier, GM recorded a net profit of $891 million, or $1.56 per share.

Revenue for the April-June period was $38.2 billion, down $8.5 billion from a year earlier.

The company said its loss included $9.1 billion in one-time charges, including $3.3 billion for the buyouts of 19,000 U.S. hourly workers, most of whom left at the end of June, as well as $2.8 billion in liabilities related to Delphi Corp. (DPHIQ), its former parts division.

Full Story Here:
GM posts $15.5 billion 2nd-quarter loss

Maybe some of you financial *whiz kids* can explain the difference between profit, loss, margin, gross and net earnings and all that to your own satisfaction. I can’t, and won’t even attempt to any more.

But imagine this, how well would things be going if Bush had been a supporter of GM and as involved there as he is with the big oil companies?