BISMARCK – The recent wildfires in western North Dakota were devastating to the oil and gas industry, the landowners and the people who live in those areas, according to Mark Bohrer, assistant director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources.

Bohrer and Justin Kringstad, director of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority, addressed the impact of the wildfires during the monthly oil and gas production report on Thursday.

“There were wells that were shut in as a precautionary measure. The industry responded and helped out with fighting the fires so, overall, I think the response was good. It was just an unfortunate situation with the dry conditions we have out there. The industry, I think, has been very responsible in helping out and being very proactive in trying to prevent future fires,” Bohrer said.

He said the Chord gas plant at Ray-Tioga was impacted on a well-specific basis. “They lost some buildings onsite and things like that,” he said. He said it was fortunate there were no oil tank fires.

“It could have been devastating but I think overall we came out OK,” he said.

Kringstad said in the immediate days and hours following when the wildfires started, potentially 100,000 barrels of oil a day were impacted.

In the following days as systems were being brought back on line and being assessed for any type of damage, he said, there was a 50-80,000 barrels per day decrease for about a week.

He said his best estimate at this time of total barrels impacting the October production numbers would be around 500,000 barrels potentially removed from those October numbers.

“Until the official numbers come in, it’s real difficult to say with any certainty exactly what the impact was, but that just gives you some perspective and scale of some of our best estimates here,” he said.

Kringstad said some of the wells may have been down for a very short time in the immediate response, just from an abundance of safety and precaution. He said if there was damage to electrical infrastructure serving those locations, it may have taken longer to get those brought back on line.

Mineral Resources Department officials had asked operators for voluntary shut ins that Saturday, Oct. 5, when the wildfires started, and operators quickly responded. Several days later, during internal meetings with field staff held every morning, estimates of 300-400 wells were shut in. In recent days, the department has had estimates of 100-150 wells still shut in due to some type of impact from the wildfires.