Average Oil Production Per North Dakota Well Per Day

Updates

December 26, 2014: data for production may be updated periodically.

Original Post

When I first started blogging about the Bakken, I posted the average oil production per North Dakota well per day. With the news that North Dakota production has plateaued at around 740,000 bopd, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at that data again.

Oil was discovered in North Dakota in 1951, so few wells early on would skew results. Therefore, I started with 1961.

Here is the average oil production per ND well per day in bbls)

January, 1961: 44 bopd per North Dakota well; 1,469 producing wells
January, 1971: 40 bopd; 1,462 producing wells
January, 1981: 54 bopd; 2,290 producing wells
January, 1991: 30 bopd; 3,393 producing wells
January, 2000, the year the Bakken boom began in Montana: 29 bopd; 3,089 active wells
January, 2005: 29 bopd; 3,154 producing wells
January, 2006: 30 bopd; 3,264 producing wells
January, 2007, the year the Bakken boom began in North Dakota: 33 bopd; 3,449 active wells
January, 2008: 38 bopd; 3,662 producing wells
January, 2009: 48 bopd; 3,951 producing wells
January, 2010: 54 bopd: 4,394 producing wells
January, 2011: 68 bopd; 5,067 producing wells
January, 2012: 86 bopd; 6,347 producing wells
December, 2012: 96 bopd: 8,004 producing wells
January, 2013: 91 bopd; 8,075 producing wells
January, 2014: 96 bopd, 9,752 producing wells (slump in oil price began October, 2014)

33 bopd/well in 2007 when the boom started in North Dakota. 96 bopd/well recently. Almost tripled in six years. 

Production would include wells that are producing but not yet completed. It will be interesting to see if during the transition to multi-pad drilling we might not see a trend, albeit temporary, in the number of producing wells continuing to increase, and average daily production per well decreasing. Bakken wells produce some oil before they are completed/fracked.

The development of the Spearfish formation has lagged during the Bakken boom. But now, it seems that Legacy and Surge are getting their drilling programs in place and will significantly increase Spearfish drilling. These wells have much lower production than the Bakken. If the number of Spearfish wells is high enough to affect the data, the Spearfish wells should pull the daily average production down per well. Of course, overall production will go up.

The source for the data is the NDIC website. At this link, click on "Historical Monthly Oil Production Statistics."