Posted on 12/23/2013 5:24:18 AM PST by thackney
U.S. Sens. John Hoeven and Heidi Heitkamp, bipartisan leaders from North Dakota, said the oil boom in their state just got louder with the passage of the Bureau of Land Management Streamlining Act.
"There are currently about 525 permits awaiting approval," Hoeven said in a statement. "This [act] will help us to alleviate the backlog and other delays that are costing us jobs and economic growth."
North Dakota is one of the premier oil-producing states in the country. The Bakken and Three Forks formations, which are positioned dominantly in the state, hold a combined 7.3 billion barrels of oil, according to the latest assessment from the U.S. Geological Survey.
The measure will make it easier to process permits in North Dakota by expanding a BLM field office in neighboring Montana to service the state.
Heitkamp said the measure uncorks the bottleneck that's existed in the state because the federal government lacked the means to coordinate its activity in western North Dakota.
"It has led to excessive waits for drilling permits that unnecessarily slow down projects," she said.
That's good news for energy companies looking to capitalize on the oil-fueled economic growth cycle under way in North Dakota, a state that's set routine records in terms of oil production.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
Based on what my customer near Williston has stated the huge boom has slowed down from what it was a year or two ago. You can actually drive into Williston now without it taking all day to go 20 miles. It may have to do with the fact that people have found employment back where they originally came from. However, he said the biggest thing is they do not have any place to put the new oil after they get it out of the ground. There is only so much storage capacity, pipeline capacity, or the speed at which a tanker car can be loaded. Therefore, why drill more holes in the ground, it will just flood the market even more.
Government has been playing the extortion game with permits. When the federal government share of the oil royalty money went up, leaving less for the states, they suddenly figured out how to get the drilling permits processed.
Hoven is a Surrender Monkey who is Democrat Lite; Hotpants er...Heitcamp is a radical Marxist. God help North Dakota.
Feds don’t get royalty payments on private or state owned mineral rights.
Oh, they're "servicing" people all right....Shut it down.
Do you have a graph that shows just the last two years?
That is what I am referring to. I may be wrong, but I believe the amount of new wells being drilled has slowed down recently.
Because the technology has improved considerably in the last 2 years...
1.....Better control and results from directional drilling...
2....with each well drilled, the understanding of the geology improves
and the bonus point:
3....with new knowledge obtained in 1 and 2 above,....older wells are also more productive.
So you get more oil from less wells than a few years ago.
Maybe a 5% slow down in the number of active rigs. Not much of a change. More likely moving in different areas making a past busy area not so busy.
NDIC Department of Mineral Resources
12/13/2013
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/directorscut/directorscut-2013-12-13.pdf
Sep rig count 183
Oct rig count 183
Nov rig count 184
- - - - -
12/17/2012
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/directorscut/directorscut-2012-12-17.pdf
Sep rig count 190
Oct rig count 188
Nov rig count 186
- - - - - - - -
12/12/2011
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/directorscut/directorscut-2011-12-12.pdf
Sep rig count 197
Oct rig count 197
Nov rig count 199
I don’t agree the number of new wells and particularly drilled well footage is significantly decreasing in North Dakota.
You might want to look at the latest state report tracking activity.
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/presentations/NDOGCPC091013.pdf
Did not say they did.
Then I don't understand what you were trying to say here.
Oil companies pay money to extract oil from federal lands or waters. Part of that money goes to the state to pay for such thing as use and abuse of infrastructure. Under this new bill, the state gets less, the fed get more. As simple as I can make it.
This article was about North Dakota and the State issuing permits.
I don’t see how that relates to the Gulf of Mexico Federal Waters.
Sorry, I see my mistake.
I get your point. I’m not sure the 2% administrative fee was the motivation, but one did follow the other.
Williston shunted a lot of the heavy truck traffic around town to the west, and that has freed up the highways in town considerably.
As far as storage, pipeline, tanker capacity, it grows to fill the need, and North Dakota is producing more oil than ever.
If the market was flooded, we wouldn't still be drilling. There are likely another 20 years of development drilling in the Bakken and Three Forks alone, and those are just two of the oil bearing formations in the Williston Basin.
Thanks thackney.
What I have been told by a customer of mine that lives in Powers Lake, is that the traffic delays that plagued the northwest corner of the state have diminished.
He also stated there was a huge rush in 2009-2011 into the area from people looking for work. Many of these have returned to where they came from.
As far as storage, pipelines, etc. we know infrastructural improvements take time. New pipeline approval can take years.
What I mean is it appears the BOOM is over. Now what we are seeing is sustainable growth. The mad rush of a few years is over. Now ND will build motels, hotels, apartments, roads, oil shipping & storage facilities to move the products(oil & gas) out and the drilling mud, pipe, rig mats, lumber, in.
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