How much Bakken oil is Recoverable Using Today's Technology?

This week a federal report is due to come out on how much oil can be recovered from the 25,000 square miles of Bakken Shale Formation covering parts of North Dakota, Montana and two Canadian provinces. Approximately two-thirds of the area is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface.

"Technology continues to advance," Dorgan said Monday. "This is not going to be a red light or green light about oil development in the Bakken -- clearly there already is a big green light there. But I think the question is pretty clear: How much of that oil is recoverable using today's technology?"

The total amount of oil in the Bakken Formation have varied anywhere from 10 billion barrels to 500 billion barrels. The report estimates how much oil can be recovered using current technology, not the total amount of oil in the formation.