North Dakota on a Sharp Growth Curve in Oil and Natural Gas

SEATTLE (Oil Monster): The forecast for North Dakota in almost all areas of petroleum production is on a sharp curve upward, with oil and natural gas production expected to nearly double in coming years, limited primarily by infrastructure keeping up.

That was a big part of the message by Lynn Helms, long-time director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, when he addressed the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, N.D. on May 23.

Helms started out by noting North Dakota has 14,457 active wells, of which 12,627 are Bakken/Three Forks, and the remainder are conventional.

There are 1,653 inactive wells, and 916 waiting on completion. “It looks like only 110 of those are true what you would call DUCs (drilled, uncompleted),” said Helms. “It looks like industry has given us a new normal, which is 800 wells in the process of finding a frac crew, getting on the schedule, getting the sand, the water and the weather for everything right,” he said.

There’s about a 15-month supply of permitted wells, totalling 1,888. There’s 13,451 wells approved and ready to permit for increased density drilling, or about an 8.5-year supply. “It gives you some indication of at least of how long this industry plans to maintain this drilling activity level.”

He noted their ultimate estimate is 55,000 to 65,000 wells eventually, and just over half are now in the pipeline.

“We’re just ending the first period of the football game. We haven’t even blown the whistle to change ends of the field, in the first period of the football game,” Helms said.

As of the end of 2017, he noted, “Your industry has brought $127 billion of capital from all over the world and put it into North Dakota’s economy. Thank you.”

He said there’s another $348 billion to go over the next 20 years.

He noted technology used in the Bakken is being used in the Eagle Ford, Niobrara and Permian shale plays, but new-well oil production per rig is still highest in the Bakken, with approximately 1,400 barres per day production.

Oil prices had, by the time of the conference, reached the point where it was now economical to work beyond the core of the Bakken play. “At today’s oil prices, economics reach way beyond the core, all the way to the Canadian border,” Helms said. “The entire Bakken is at play again.”

There were, as of May 23, 65 active drilling rigs in North Dakota, up five from a week before.

Courtesy: www.pipelinenews.ca