The oil and gas industry in North Dakota has paid a total of more than $18 billion over the last 10 years in oil and gas severance taxes, says Rob Lindberg, Bismarck, director of Bakken Backers.

“It doesn’t include income taxes of companies and employees have paid. It doesn’t include the sales tax that gets paid on every piece of pipe that gets put in the ground or casing that’s put down a hole,” he said. He said one new well is about $200,000 of sales taxes.

“These are major numbers that really fund our state,” he said.

Lindberg spoke at the March meeting of the Minot Area Chamber of Commerce’s Energy Committee at Buffalo Wings & Rings.

Bakken Backers, a coalition formed several years ago, is made up of businesses, leaders, workers and other individuals who support North Dakota’s oil and gas industry.

2018 was a record-setting year with oil production hitting 1.4 million barrels per day in December 2018, according to Lindberg. “It’s the highest we’ve ever hit,” he said. At the end of 2017, he said the state was at 1.2 million barrels of oil produced.

He said natural gas production in the state continues to grow.

“Each well is about a $9 million investment in North Dakota…” Lindberg added.

Lindberg said people often forget the Bakken was really the first oil shale play that was economic and proven. He said what is done in the Bakken is applied at other oil shale plays in the country, including the Permian, an area he calls “our new richest cousin.”

The Permian Basin is a large basin in southwestern United States. He said the Permian has gone from almost nothing in production to 4 million barrels a day.

Lindberg said he expects there will be more major pipeline announcements in the coming 12 to 18 months.

He said rail traffic has taken another life from the Bakken and is up somewhere around 30 percent of the total exports.

What does the future hold?

Lindberg said Continental Resources projections for North Dakota’s greatest number of wells is somewhere between 55,000 and 70,000 wells.

Many new jobs will need to be filled in the state’s oil and gas industry.

To fill those jobs, Lindberg urged the community leaders to share the good news of the area. He said testimony to legislators is important as well as getting involved locally including the local Chambers of Commerce, Bakken Backers, American Petroleum Institute (API) committees in North Dakota and the Society of Petroleum Engineers.