--Which Makes it Unpalatable for the Mainstream Media
While Jeroen van der Veer, Shell’s chief executive, fears for the future of oil supplies after 2015--maybe he's confusing Shell's oil supply with the rest of the world's--Newsmax has just released information on the HUGE oil discovery in Montana: the Williston Basin or "Bakken" field.
About 470 miles outside the state capitol of Helena - in a place called Richland County, Montana - more millionaires are being created per capita than anywhere else in America.
It's 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, Montana is 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 sizeable 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.
As one can see from the map below, before the 'Bakken' discovery, the U.S. was still a major oil producer--it is just a major consumer, also.
The relative MSM coverage of the 'Bakken' find is another example of the topsy-turvy media reporting to which the USA--and most of the rest of the world--has grown accustomed.
Politicians, most of who have seldom been involved in anything economically-productive, are looked to as providing answers to complex questions. As Thomas Sowell has said:
Let's face it. Supply and demand will never replace "need" and "greed" in political discussions of economic issues.
Talking about the "need" for more affordable housing or more affordable medical care is what will get politicians more votes this election year.
Voters don't want to hear about impersonal things like supply and demand. They want to hear about how their political heroes will stop the villains from "gouging" them or "exploiting" them with high prices.
Moral melodrama is where it's at, politically.
Moral melodrama, indeed.
Politicians in general--and Democrats, in particular--find little that is "sexy" in talking about supply and demand. How much easier to switch the subject: to "Big Oil Villains".
It has always been thus: politicians TALK about hard questions, hard problems and hard solutions, while their ACTIONS scream "easy". We've come to expect this: their desk plaques might read "Senator" and "Congressman" when you see them on C-SPAN, but for most, a simple "Politician" label would be more accurate.
Careful followers of the economic debates that occupy today's politicians understand this and sigh. But it's seemingly above the heads of most MSM reporters, Bill O'Reilly and Democrat Congressional members.
The 'Bakken' field is economic good news for the U.S.A. and for American consumers.
That's reason enough to provoke little excitement among the Mainstream Media and campaigning politicians.
by Mondoreb
Sources:
* Shell chief fears oil shortage in seven years
* Too "Complex"?: Part II
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