A Fracking Miracle? The Bakken Oil Boom in North Dakota

Since 2006, oil production from the Bakken reserve has quadrupled growing to more than 660,000 barrels a day, ensuring North Dakota as America’s second largest oil producer in the US, second only to Texas and followed by Alaska.

In the Bakken formation the oil recovery is exceptional but particularly difficult. Therefore, horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing is employed to boost previously inaccessible oil reserves. Fracking gains state support in North Dakota where operators are not required to unveil their fracking components to protect trade secrets of their business.

According to the National Geographic, ‘in 2011 the North Dakota legislature passed a bill that said, in effect, fracking is safe, end of discussion.’  Specific state regulations have supported the recent oil boom that has had numerous economic benefits on families and communities such as diminishing unemployment (current rate is 1%).

This oil boom is leading North Dakota to pursue energy independence and massive economic growth. ‘Of every dollar the oil industry earns, the state takes 11.5 cents, which produced revenues of more than two billion dollars from July 2011 to October 2012. One-third of that has been deposited in a permanent fund, the interest on which cannot be touched until 2017. The rest is to be divided between the state and local jurisdictions. How the money will be spent remains uncertain, although plans are in the works to send some of it back to the oil patch for new roads, power lines, and municipal services like firefighting and law enforcement, and to help build schools, hospitals, and recreation facilities’ as it was reported by the National Geographic.

Watch the video ‘The North Dakota Miracle: Fracking in the Bakken’ produced by Heritage’s Brandon Stewart in partnership with the Institute for Energy Research.

Alternatively if you’d like to learn more about shale, why not attend our event World National Oil Companies Congress.

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