Is North Dakota shale oil the new "Gull Island"?

There seems to be spate of "drill, baby, drill" post going around and I was wondering, is this a new meme the repugs are cooking up?

They are promising millions of barrells and 100,000 jobs all paying you 100 grand or more a year. Really.

Gull Island was supposed to be this massive oilfield that wasn't allowed to be drilled because of those darn enviromentalist. Much to my suprise they happened to be talking about the very field in which I and several of my family memebers have worked in for decades so it piqued my curiosity.
Needless to say, I found Gull Island the map using Google Earth and proceeded to laugh my ass off. It just so happens that Gull Island was surrounded by drillsites and production facilities all around it. So the fact that it wasn't be tapped was complete and utter bullshit. I guess Google wasn't thought to be as common of a tool to look these things up and to tell the rest of the world what a total crock the story line was.

I included a link to one of the hits I got from google. Enjoy.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/gull_island_oil.html

Because both are about extracting tiny amounts of fossil fuel through energy-intensive and environmentally devastating techniques.

They're selling it, baby.

Don't buy it.

They keep changing their numbers every other day.

They remind me of the Pebble mining project they are trying to do up here. Every week they changed their "estimates" to larger and larger finds and of course more and more jobs that would be "created".

That's my impression of most of the shale projects I've read about, and the tar sands aren't much better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Square_Bank

I had a couple of friends (geologist and pet. engineer) who lost their jobs in the late 70s because they would not put their stamp on inflated estimates (lies) about the projected reserves which allowed their company to borrow more money to stay afloat and keep drilling. The loan paper was total junk but the Oklahoma banks sold it upstream to the greedy/hungry east coast bankers who didn't understand it was all just a shell game.

Everyting old is new again.

Thus no new jobs.

Not understanding what you are trying to say.

But there is always demand for energy and people will shell out for it.

Forget all "subsidize with taxes" nonsense and go for the end game.

We consume 19 M bbl/dy.

Bit of a gap.

Less the a drop in the bucket.