The Alberta Bakken Oil Play

Beating the Index reports that the Bakken formation is a 350 million-year-old layer of rock occupying 520,000 km2 of the subsurface of the Williston Basin covering parts of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, North Dakota and Western Montana.

The editorial is quoted as saying:

The formation was discovered in 1953 and as early as 1974, it was postulated that vast amounts of petroleum (up to 500 billion barrels) were contained in the formation itself but it was not economically viable as the oil was trapped in shale (fine sedimentary rocks).

Click here to access the entire Editorial