Bakken Play is Huge!!

The Bakken oil play stretches across Montana, North Dakota and into Southeastern Saskatchewan. We're talking about some potentially massive reserves of oil, too. The amount of oil in place has, most recently, been estimated between 271 billion and 503 billion barrels of oil.

Even if we take the lower estimates, that's still a huge amount of oil, far more than the 36 billion barrels of oil believed to be in Alaska's North Slope. Let's just say that North Dakota oil production has been growing significantly. Crude oil production has been strong, up to about 40 million barrels in 2006. That's roughly a 20% increase since 2004.

Saskatchewan is setting up to be a serious force in the Canadian oil industry. Underneath the south eastern section of Saskatchewan is part of the Bakken formation. The entire Bakken play lies underneath south eastern Saskatchewan, western Manitoba and North Dakota.