N.D. oil production tops 1 million-barrels-a-day milestone

startribune ^ | Updated: June 17, 2014 - 11:08 PM | DAVID SHAFFER ,

[ckilmer]

North Dakota has joined the big leagues of crude oil production, surpassing 1 million barrels per day — an output second only to Texas in the U.S.

State officials said Tuesday that North Dakota yielded 1,001,149 barrels daily in April from a record 10,658 wells. Jubilant oil industry officials hailed the benchmark as another sign that the United States is freeing itself from the grip of foreign oil.

[ckilmer]

North Dakota’s oil output is expected to climb to 1.5 million barrels per day by 2017, said Lynn Helms, director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources. Production then could plateau as the inevitable decline in older wells’ output is balanced by new wells, he said.

Reger’s company, founded in 2006, acquires oil leases in North Dakota and finances the drilling of wells by other oil companies. Overall, Northern has participated in 20 percent of the wells drilled in the region, he said.

“Technology has been outpacing the estimates for 10 years,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “The field just keeps getting bigger, and the technologies around the Bakken just keep getting better.”

Reger said Northern has 25 years of “drilling inventory,” and he expects the boom to last a while.

[South Dakota]

it’s not the boom that it was when I came to the state in 2010.
then, every 5th vehicle on the highway was a car.
so if you were east bound, 4 trucks would go past you west bound and the 5th one would be a car. they are laying pipeline here in west ND.
up in the northwest corner of ND they are pounding nails and building buildings but not to the extent that it once was.
we have no way to easily transport the oil we produce

[backwoods-engineer]

All of this in spite of Obama and the oppressive, anti-industrial federal government. If it was up to them, not one drop of oil would flow, not one kilowatt of nuclear power.