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ND oil production falls below 1 million barrels a day

Eloise Ogden/MDN Oil production in North Dakota fell below a million barrels of oil a day in April.

BISMARCK – North Dakota’s oil production fell below 1 million barrels a day in April, according to a new report released by the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources this week.

In April the state pumped 900,597 barrels of oil a day, a 20% decrease from the previous month when the state produced 1.122 million barrels of oil a day. The all-time N.D. high in oil production was in November 2019, when the state produced more than 1.519 million barrels of oil a day.

The state’s natural gas production also decreased, with North Dakota producing 73,347,983 million cubic feet ( MCF), or 2,444,933 MCF a day, in April, a 19% decline from the previous month when the state produced 93,292,505 MCF or 3,009,436 MCF a day.

As of Tuesday, 40 rigs were actively drilling in North Dakota, an increase from April when 38 rigs were drilling and in March, when there were 34. The state had an all-time high of 218 rigs drilling on May 29, 2012.

The Fort Berthold Reservation produced 175,409 barrels of oil a day in April. Six rigs were actively drilling on the reservation. The reservation has 2,630 active wells and 20 wells waiting on completion. There’s future potential for 3,922 wells on the reservation.

On Tuesday, the price of crude oil was $118.25 a barrel for N.D. light sweet and $120.93 for West Texas Intermediate. The all-time high was $125.62 for N.D. light sweet and $134.02 for West Texas Intermediate in June 2008.

The state had 16,896 (preliminary number) of producing wells as of April. The previous month the state had 17,087 producing wells.

Lynn Helms, director of the Mineral Resources Department, said the drilling rig count is slowly increasing. He said the number of active completion crews increased to 16 this week.

He said OPEC+ continues to phase out oil production cuts that began September 2021 and expected to run through the end of the third quarter of 2022. At its June meeting, he said OPEC+ decided to increase production about 680,000 barrels per day in July and increase prices.

“Russia sanctions have exacerbated an already tight market. The strategic petroleum reserve releases by OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries resulted in a very short-term drop of oil prices,” Helms said.

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