However Wood Mackenzie said there was a level of confidence in the industry.
Wood Mackenzie, a respected global compiler of oil and gas data, estimates the Bakken reserves are more like 9 billion bbl.
The enormous signature bonuses are verified by Scottish consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
That will double by 2010, according to a Wood Mackenzie study.
Edinburgh-based Wood Mackenzie said although investment levels were very strong, with only two new finds last year, the drilling success rate was at an all-time low.
Due to the economic downturn, there has been what Paul McConnell, senior analyst at energy research group Wood Mackenzie, calls a "collapse in industrial demand for energy".
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"The silver lining is the shape of the profile of these projects, which is different than conventional ones, " says Simon Flowers, head of corporate analysis at Wood Mackenzie.
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The American Petroleum Institute recently commissioned a study by the Wood Mackenzie consulting firm, which estimated that better federal energy policy would create an additional 1.4 million jobs by 2030.
According to a report released by the Wood Mackenzie firm in early January, Eagle Ford is now the largest oil and gas development on the face of the earth based on total capital expenditures.
Wood Mackenzie, an oil consultancy in Edinburgh, says that more than half of the international oil companies' long-term capital investments are now going into these four "resource themes" a huge shift, considering how marginal the companies once considered them.
WSJ: Big Oil Companies Are Shifting Their Focus Back to the West
Rhodri Thomas, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy, says the geology of the Polish shale is similar to that of the Barnett Shale, a giant field in Texas that now supplies about 7% of America's gas.
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