Green River

North Dakota has been in the news recently because of the Bakken Oil field where the estimated recoverable reserves are about 25 billion barrels. What is not reported is the Green River Formation that holds 1,500 billion barrels of recoverable oil. This is located in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah and is on government land. This is enough oil, based on current consumption to last 190 years. The Green River Formation—an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming—contains the world’s largest deposits of oil shale. USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions. The North Dakota economy is booming with high paying good jobs and the state tax coffers are overflowing. This same thing could be happening in these other states if the government would open these areas to drilling. Our elected officials keep saying we need to grow the economy in order to provide more middle class high paying jobs and this presents a good opportunity.