Just under a fifth were interested in diversifying into unconventional oil and gas, including fracking.
The result: 3 million net acres in 13 unconventional oil and gas fields from coast to coast.
While the unconventional oil story continues to unfold and evolve, an abundance of domestic crude oil is expected.
The emergence of unconventional oil and gas will have tremendous impacts on both the energy industry and the economy.
The other big industrial expansion revolves around the unconventional oil and gas boom.
Demand for frac sand is rising as more energy companies explore unconventional oil deposits, but the supply hasn't kept up.
As a result of these infrastructure needs, and the tremendous opportunities associated with unconventional oil and gas, U.S. economic activity is rising.
Meanwhile, he continued, U.S. output is increasing as unconventional oil production rises.
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Unconventional oil production (whether from shale or oil sands) is an energy-intensive process, and emits more CO2 than conventional extractive methods do.
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And most of that is due to shale gas and unconventional oil wealth in U.S. areas like the Bakken in North Dakota and Montana.
With unconventional oil, the damage tends to be higher all around more land gets disturbed, more pollutants are produced, and more opportunities arise for contamination.
Alex Farrell is a professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley who studies the impacts of unconventional oil.
Despite significant breakthroughs in the production of unconventional oil (fracking and the boom in shale plays), these fields have very short life spans, according to Hummel.
Beyond the boom in unconventional oil in the U.S., Bain points out the increase in Iraqi and African production and, most importantly, the high levels of Saudi output.
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It specializes in exploiting unconventional oil and shale natural gas plays within the Bakken and Three Forks formations, situated within the Williston Basin in North Dakota and Montana region.
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The logistical and technological challenges of unconventional oil and deepwater drilling, now getting back up to speed after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, will also boost demand.
Another impact of U.S. unconventional oil and gas development will be increased in electricity demand (occurring more dramatically in various localized pockets), directly resulting from investment in waves one and two.
In total, the energy industry expects more than two million jobs will be created in the U.S. related to the enormous energy expansion from our various unconventional oil and natural gas reserves.
Specifically, the unconventional oil and gas industry is currently one of the strongest sectors in our fragile economy, and at this point, an effective tax on this sector could impede economic growth.
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ChevronTexaco's primary projects are in Canada and Venezuela, where it thinks there are 2 trillion barrels or more worth of such "unconventional oil" reserves--an amount greater than the world's remaining reserves of conventional crude.
Researchers at WoodMackenzie figure that breakneck development of the Bakken and Eagle Ford plays will help grow production of unconventional oil in the U.S. from 1.5 million bpd now to 4.1 million bpd by 2020.
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Like it or not, IOCs still have lucrative (some would say larger) unconventional oil and gas plays they can go for in North America, Russia, East Africa, Australasia and even distinctly conventional MENA and Caspian regions.
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In October, it released its first estimates for the neighboring (in Ohio) or underlying (in Pennsylvania and New York) Utica shales of 38 TCF, plus 940 million barrels of unconventional oil resources and 208 million barrels of unconventional liquids.
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While Australia is the best part of 10-years behind the U.S. in terms of exploring for and developing its unconventional oil and gas potential it is a country which featured prominently in a 2011 analysis of world shale gas potential by the U.S. Energy Information Agency.
One thing is certain: the natural gas industry must be forthcoming and honest about the risks that unconventional oil and gas development create, proactive in taking the steps necessary to minimize those risks, and willing to collect and publicly disclose the data necessary to enable communities to evaluate for themselves whether their health and environment are being fully protected.
Nationally, 25 billion barrels in proved unconventional shale oil exists.
The US Geological Survey estimates that the Bakken field has 6.2bn barrels of recoverable oil, using unconventional methods of fracturing shale oil formations.
Unconventional sources of oil and gas that are set for further exploitation include Canada's tar sands, shale and coal-bed methane deposits around the world.
Because of the marriage of hydrofracking and horizontal drilling, the world is now awash in unconventional, but recoverable oil and gas.
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Crude from the tar sands and other unconventional sources could keep oil flowing well into the middle of the century, and perhaps beyond.
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