For The Archives: North Dakota Oil Production

For the archives: FinancialSense.com is reporting that Bakken production will eventually plateau. Well, duh. I'm not sure what the point of the article was. Of course, a lot of my posts don't have any points or purposes either; I guess that's what blogging is all about.

Whatever.

Having said that, the graph at the linked article was most interesting. North Dakota is currently producing about 800,000 bopd. In 2055, these are the production estimates:

• proven: 500,000 bopd
• probable: 600,000 bopd
• possible: 900,000 bopd

For these projections, the following data for technically-reoverable oil was (were?) used:

• proven: 7 billion bbls
• probable: 10 billion bbls
• possible: 15 billion bbls

The "15-billion-bbl" figure is still very, very low by some estimates:

• USGS: 7 billion bbls (which the USGS admits, is conservative)
• CLR, pre-2013 USGS assessment: 24 billion bbls (middle Bakken, upper Three Forks)
• CLR, post-2013 USGS assessment: 54 billion bbls (middle Bakken, four benches of the Three Forks) 

I don't think one can use straight arithmetic to extrapolate, but if one did, at 24 billion bbls technically-recoverable oil, one could see 1.5 million bopd being produced by the state in 2055. This is consistent with what the Bentek analysis predicted: 2.2 million bopd by 2022.

The graph is titled "North Dakota oil production" but the accompanying notes refer only to the the Bakken/Three Forks. Likewise the CLR figures of 24 and 54 billion bbls refer only to the Bakken/Three Forks. 

If Harold Hamm is correct, the graph referenced above could look a lot different in 2055. By then I will have celebrated by 100th birthday.

But again, worse case scenario: North Dakota oil production will be "about the same" in 2055 as it was in 2011. Pretty spectacular, I would say. 2011 was a pretty good year by all accounts.