From the Google, and Wikipedia, you get the drift.
An extensive dolomite layer between two oil shale layers, two miles or so deep, beneath North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan, who knows, perhaps even beneath Fridley.
It is extensive. The dolomite layer is not thick but long and wide. Sideways drilling is being used. Strib has one of their typical brutally awful touchy-feely things with no facts but naming two or three farm families whose lives have been impacted.
The talk of USGS and others (e.g., here and here), is in billions of barrels; and many, many more there than estimated as recoverable by present technology. Whatever that means.
But Strib might be as sensible as anyone in not saying zip about the size of it all.
Nobody knows, many with varying skills guess. The big hoot, to go seven or so pages deep into the Google return for "bakken oil formation" or "bakken formation" and see all the oil gurus and investment advisors telling you who's hot on the speculative oil exploration/drilling market. It makes you think they're drilling and finding snake oil, not petroleum. Caveat emptor, and cleck your rings after shaking hands with some of those specialists.
It is like the definitive word on the safety and public health impact of taconite tailings in paving. Nobody really knows. But some are willing to take risks. Only difference, the ones seeking profits from the Bakken are taking the risks with their own wealth, whereas the ones seeking fees and getting rid of mining waste are taking risks with your health and mine. Hey, not all that different, or is it? Have they put that stuff on the road in front of YOUR house? Do you know? Do you know how you might find out?
So, what's the true story on the Bakken? It's been bouncing around the Internet for at least a few weeks, probably more if you go to real obscure sites, and the peak oil worriers say it will not change the scenario, only the timing. Peak oil skeptics say, what? Rigged markets? Drill here and now to pay less? We will never run out and the atmosphere can absorb an infinite amount of carbon dioxide without depleting the oxygen we breath and without messing the earth up in irreversible ways?
Say you believe that. What if they're wrong, and the global warming worriers are correct? We could screw up badly. It is like, sure you can be an atheist, but what if there is an after-life, a Heaven and Hell. Boy, will you be sorry.
Only difference, there's science behind the global worry and peak oil worries. There's millenia of mythology for the rest. So, who do you trust? And what's the actual extent and reserve capacity of the Bakken?