Dane Kaldahl
English 104 Essay 3
Toby Veeder
March 9, 2011
Dear Editor,
I have recently come about your article about the Bakken Oil Reserves in the Northern U.S. Just to recap what I read it seems as though the Bakken Oil Reserves could potentially satisfy our needs as a country when it comes to oil and natural gas. With the massive amounts reachable oil it is up for debate whether or not we should pull out of the middle and cut ties with them for good. I say yes.
It was said by the United States Geographical Surveyors that this could potentially put the economy on the rise again, open more jobs, and overall be very prosperous for the U.S. Only a year ago surveyors took it upon themselves to see how big this well really was. And only a year ago it was predicted that there was a possible 100 billion barrels of reachable oil in the Bakken Oil Fields. With a reassessment just last month, there is now a predicted 25 times more barrels of oil than the 100 billion predicted only a year earlier. In case study, this is eight times the amount of oil bought from Saudi Arabia, and 500 times more than the U.S. purchases from Yemen. 
The Middle East supplies the U.S. with most of its oil, true. However, something a lot of people may not know is the fact that the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, ect…) as of April 2011 will no longer be accepting U.S. currency for oil. With that date shortly approaching people are predicting an economic meltdown. With barrels of oil sky rocketing from around $88 a barrel all the way to $152 gas prices expecting to sore past five and six dollars a gallon the Bakken Oil Reserves may be the United States’ best chance of avoiding an economic crisis far worse than The Great Depression.
Being a newly discovered United States oil reserve there is no question that much more surveying and test should be done before the United States pulls completely out of the middle east. It is predicted that in only five years time that all of the research and observing that we need to be done will be done. Once we have definitive evidence that we could live off of the oil supply in the Bakken Oil Wells it will be only a matter of time till we stop purchasing oil from the middle east.
Works Cited
Ronquillo, Ulysses. "The Bakken Factor." Houston Chronicle 13 Jan 2011: n. pag. Web. 5 Mar 2011. <http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/7380721.html>.
