North Dakota Reaches Significant Achievement in Oil Production
The Bismarck Tribune highlighted a significant achievement this holiday season – North Dakota now produces 1.5 million barrels per day.
Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms believes growth will continue in the new year, “It should result in small increments of production growth through the year 2020.” The U.S. has picked up on oil production where countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia have fallen short. East Coast reserves have benefitted specifically throughout these disruptions.
North Dakota Pipeline Authority Director Justin Krinstad remarked, “Those East Coast refineries, they really only have two options for crude sourcing: that’s either waterborne barrels coming from foreign sources or it’s crude-by-rail coming into the region.” Bakken crude oil and the infrastructure that houses it came to the rescue.
North Dakota also saw a major triumph in natural gas transportation. The Elk Creek Pipeline of Oneok began operations carrying up to 240,000 barrels of LNG from the Bakken region to Kansas – offering tremendous support to natural gas plants that had needed support in order to perform at full capacity.
“You can have all the processing capacity in the world, but if you don’t have an outlet at the tailgate of that facility for those NGLs, that plant will become congested and it will not be able to operate at its stated capacity,” Kringstad said.
“It should be a very happy holiday for the state of North Dakota,” said Helms.
