North Dakota Oil Production This Year Will CRUSH Previous Record -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA -- Depsite One of the Worse Winters on Record

Link here to The Bismarck Tribune, the article begins:

North Dakota oil drillers are on pace to crush the state's crude production record despite a year fraught with worse-than-normal winter weather and record spring flooding that idled rigs and hampered access to the oil patch.

The state Industrial Commission said crude production through June totaled 64.6 million barrels. Based on current production estimates, the state should end 2011 with about 133 million barrels, up about 18 percent from the record set last year.

North Dakota produced 11.2 million barrels of crude in May and 11.5 million barrels in June, according to the latest Industrial Commission figures available.

Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, called the production remarkable because the weather conditions this year have been among the worst in the state's 60-year oil history, stranding millions of barrels at well sites.

"So many roads were shut down we couldn't move crude," said Ness, whose group represents about 250 companies.

Nothing but "wow!"

Data points:

• NDIC: "we're still trying to catch up"
• June: another production record
• Every month from here on out should meet / exceed June's production
• June's production: 385,000 barrels/day -- just 15,000 short of another milestone
• Will soon hit 200 active drilling rigs (there were 193 today, another record)

Note:

North Dakota oil drillers are on pace to crush the state's crude production record despite a year fraught with worse-than-normal winter weather and record spring flooding that idled rigs and hampered access to the oil patch.

The state Industrial Commission said crude production through June totaled 64.6 million barrels. Based on current production estimates, the state should end 2011 with about 133 million barrels, up about 18 percent from the record set last year.

Despite all this:

Lynn Helms, director of the state Department of Mineral Resources, has said there were 822 idle wells in February, up from 760 in January. The number of idle rigs peaked in June at 900 because of soggy conditions and weight restrictions on roads that made many well sites inaccessible to trucks and other equipment needed to move the crude off site.

For newbies, when I speak of "rigs," I'm talking about those huge structures you see in the oil patch that are drilling for oil. In the paragraph above, I assume the writer is talking about "wells," where rigs once were. There are "only" 193 active rigs in North Dakota today, so I doubt the rigs in the paragraph above was referring to drilling rigs. But I may be misunderstanding something. It wouldn't be the first time. Someone will write in to correct me.

There are about 5,700 producing wells in North Dakota. I believe about 900 of them were shut-in, or otherwise inactive, due to weather-related issues as noted above.
For comparison:

North Dakota's oil patch pumping about 100,000 more barrels of crude daily than a year ago at this time and about double the production in 2008. State and industry officials estimate the state could hit 700,000 barrels daily by 2015.

Agency figures show Alaska production is pegged at about 550,000 barrels a day, followed by California at 540,000 barrels. Texas leads the nation with about 1,410 million barrels daily.