BLACK GOLD. TEXAS NORTH DAKOTA TEA. “A long-awaited federal report on oil that could be recovered in parts of North Dakota, Montana and two Canadian provinces is to be released this week. The Bakken shale formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface.” Whether this will live up to the 200 billion barrel figure that was bouncing around the blogosphere earlier isn’t clear. (Via Power and Control).