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Could oil production from the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana rival output from Saudi Arabia's supergiant Ghawar oilfield, the greatest oil-bearing structure the world has ever known? Until recently, comparisons between the shale fields of the Bakken and Ghawar, which produces 5 million barrels per day, would have been dismissed as fanciful. But Bakken's exponential growth and enormous reserves put it on course to produce more than 1 million barrels per day by the middle of next year, which will earn it a place in the small pantheon of truly elite oil fields. Ghawar accounts for nearly half...

Energy Policy: Leases and production are down on federal lands, the EPA is waging war on coal, and as for building enough pipelines to encircle the earth, we'd settle for just one from Canada to the Gulf. When President Obama, in responding Tuesday to Mitt Romney's chiding about failing to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, claimed that his administration has added enough new oil and gas pipelines to "encircle the Earth and then some," we felt a perfect response from Romney would have been, "You didn't build that." In fact, energy companies have built some 55,000 miles of pipeline, including...

Energy Policy: Leases and production are down on federal lands, the EPA is waging war on coal, and as for building enough pipelines to encircle the earth, we'd settle for just one from Canada to the Gulf. When President Obama, in responding Tuesday to Mitt Romney's chiding about failing to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, claimed that his administration has added enough new oil and gas pipelines to "encircle the Earth and then some," we felt a perfect response from Romney would have been, "You didn't build that." In fact, energy companies have built some 55,000 miles of pipeline, including...

On Thursday, members of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis took a tour of the Bakken area. The trips was planned so that Bank President Narayana Kocherlakota and his staff could gather more information on what is currently happening in the region from an economic standpoint. “Obviously, what’s happening here in the Bakken —we took a tour today between Minot and Williston—is quite special,” said Kocherlakota in meeting with the press after the tour. “Just the level of economic vitality is quite different her relative to anywhere else.” With all the struggles in the national economy, western North Dakota is...

The wages are through the roof, housing is scarce and expensive, supplies cost a fortune and drilling is both technically challenging and pricey. Add the lack of pipelines and oilfield infrastructure coupled with fast-rising production and it translates into oil that is expensive to produce and then sold at discounts to benchmark crudes. Sound like Fort McMurray? Nope. Try Fort Berthold. A description of Canada's booming oilsands, perhaps? No, again. Try about 1,000 kilometres to the south, in North Dakota's booming Bakken light oil play. Few industries have historically delivered convulsive boom-bust cycles like the oil and gas business. Today,...

World oil demand growth will slow in 2013 from the already weak 2012, OPEC said on Wednesday, citing Europe's debt worries, a faltering U.S. economic recovery and deceleration of growth in emerging markets. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which produces a third of global oil, said healthy output levels from non-OPEC producers next year would be enough to cover the modest growth in demand without the need for OPEC itself to increase output. "Besides the euro zone crisis, geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, the contraction of manufacturing in the U.S. for the first time since 2010...

North Dakota oil producers are increasingly using trains to hunt for the best price for their crude. North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources director Lynn Helms says as much as 40 percent of the state’s oil exports are being shipped by train instead of pipeline. Helms says there isn’t enough pipeline space yet to handle all of North Dakota’s production. It is now almost 640,000 barrels a day.

This is a tale of two cities. They have names you may not recognize but which you’ve probably read about in the last few years: Fremont and Williston. Fremont, Calif., is the southernmost city in California’s East Bay, just a few freeway exits from Silicon Valley. It’s not as upscale as Palo Alto or Cupertino, but has its own distinctions. It was the site of the NUMMI plant where General Motors and Toyota collaborated for years but which closed in April 2010. It’s the site of the California School for the Deaf. Politically, it’s Democratic territory: Fremont voted 71 to...

This is a tale of two cities. No, not Dickens' phlegmatic London and passionate Paris. Nor the two neighborhoods Charles Murray contrasted in his recent bestseller "Coming Apart" -- prosperous but isolated Belmont (actually, Mitt Romney's home for decades) and needy and disorganized Fishtown. These two cities have names you may not recognize but which you have probably read about in the last few years: Fremont and Williston. Fremont, Calif., is the southernmost city in California's East Bay, just around the corner from (well, a few freeway exits away from) Silicon Valley. It's not as upscale as Palo Alto or...

This is a tale of two cities. No, not Dickens' phlegmatic London and passionate Paris. Nor the two neighborhoods Charles Murray contrasted in his recent bestseller "Coming Apart" -- prosperous but isolated Belmont (actually, Mitt Romney's home for decades) and needy and disorganized Fishtown. These two cities have names you may not recognize but which you have probably read about in the last few years: Fremont and Williston. Fremont, Calif., is the southernmost city in California's East Bay, just around the corner from (well, a few freeway exits away from) Silicon Valley. It's not as upscale as Palo Alto or...

The Northwest Territories has switched its engine for economic independence to oil from natural gas as majors start exploring a promising shale play in the central Mackenzie region. The Canol shale formation could be as big as the prolific Bakken light oil play which stretches across Montana, North Dakota, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, said David Ramsey, minister of industry and of transportation for the NWT, Wednesday. Major oil and gas producers have invested $628 million in working commitments on 15 parcels in the central Mackenzie region since 2011, establishing a foothold in the promising region, Ramsey said. “It goes to show...

The guy has zero college and walks out of high school and is making 90-grand," said a Williston, N.D., teacher with a master's degree, speaking to The Associated Press about a former student who's working in the Oil Patch. "To me, that seems to be an injustice." Say what? Neither justice nor a degree entitles a person to a higher income. That's one of the fundamental truths of the labor market, and people in Williston and elsewhere should understand why.

Even though oil prices have been falling, North Dakota’s oil production continues to rise. The state Department of Mineral Resources reports on Tuesday that North Dakota oil producers pumped an average of 639,000 barrels of oil each day in May. That adds up to almost 20 million barrels of oil for the month.

The Quick Take: Rapid oil and gas development in the “oil patch” of western North Dakota and northeastern Montana has created huge demand for workers—not just in the oilfields, but also in a range of non-oil industries. But so far, the supply of labor—from within and outside the region—has responded slowly to demand. In recent years, job openings have soared and unemployment has dropped to very low levels—below 3 percent in a number of counties. The Bakken oil play is drawing job seekers from other Ninth District states and the rest of the country, but they’re not coming in sufficient...

North Dakota’ s capacity to export crude oil by rail has jumped about 55 percent in June. The increase comes with two new loading facilities in western North Dakota’s oil patch. Musket Corp. increased capacity at its crude-to-rail facility at Dore from 10,000 barrels to 60,000 barrel per day.

Energy Boom: One state has found a solution to job and economic growth so successful it may eliminate one of the most onerous of taxes. It turns out that, yes, we can drill our way out of our problems. On Tuesday in North Dakota, a state flush with revenues from oil produced from the Bakken Shale formation it sits astride, voters were deciding whether theirs will become the first and only state not to have a property tax. If it passes (polls didn't close until after our press time), it ll be the first time a state has eliminated a...

In the April 17 edition of Forbes, contributor Josh Barro cited an astonishing jump in North Dakota tax collections in 2011 due to the recent oil and gas boom in the northern plains state. Citing U.S. Census Bureau report on 2011 state tax collections figures, Barro said tax collections in North Dakota have soared — up 44.4 percent over 2010, all on the strength of the oil and gas boom in the Bakken shale formation. Severance taxes (taxes on natural resource extraction) leaped 65 percent from year to year and now make up 49 percent of the state’s tax collections....

The gusher of economic activity flowing from the boom in North Dakota’s Oil Patch often is reflexively credited with single-handedly driving the state’s impressive growth. But figures from Job Service North Dakota make it clear that the robust prosperity and employment growth are occurring statewide. The 24,059 job openings listed online at Job Service as of April reflect a jump of 66 percent over a year ago — and two-thirds of the opportunities are outside the state’s oil-producing counties. The fact that two of every three job openings are outside the Oil Patch often is lost in the hubbub surrounding...

chool officials in the northwestern North Dakota oil patch say they are in a state of emergency because of an influx of students and need state help. Schools might need as much as $200 million to handle as many as 3,000 new students next year, Stanley Superintendent Kent Hjelmstad told state legislators during a Thursday meeting in Williston. The amount is double the estimate in a recent study done by a Bismarck consultant at the request of Gov. Jack Dalrymple. Hjelmstad said needs include new buildings, additional staff, more buses, support for a growing special education population, teacher housing and...

North Dakota passed Alaska in March to become the second-leading state in crude oil production, trailing only Texas, according to preliminary figures released Monday. North Dakota produced an average of 575,490 barrels of crude oil every day in March, another record, according to Lynn Helms, director of the state’s Department of Mineral Resources. The crude is coming from a record 6,636 wells. In February, the state produced 558,255 barrels and had 6,450 wells. The number of rigs drilling in the state was at 208 on Monday, about where it has been for eight months, including a record 212 drilling for...