Production in North Dakota’s Bakken/Three Forks shale playscontinued to climb month over month in August, the most recent month for accumulating statistics, the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) reported. With more wells producing in August compared to the previous month (7,701 vs. 7,481), both crude oil and natural gas production exceeded July totals. Crude oil production reached 21.7 million bbl in August, compared with 20.9 million bbl in July. A number of wells remained idle as there were 8,495 wells capable of production in August, DMR said. As in recent months, the vast bulk of the production came from four counties: Dunn, McKenzie, Mountrail and Williams.

ArcLight Capital Partners LLC has closed on its acquisition of Blackwater Midstream Corp., which develops and manages third party petroleum, chemical and agricultural bulk liquid storage terminals with operations in Louisiana, Maryland and Georgia. “We believe low, sustained natural gas prices and surging crude production will result in increased bulk storage needs to serve the domestic refining, petrochemical, chemical and agricultural industries,” said Daniel Revers, ArcLight managing partner and cofounder.

Agilent Technologies Inc. and the University of Houston (UH) are undertaking a three-year petroleum research collaboration in hopes of creating applications that “provide new insights” into crude oil, as well as the science of shale gas. Agilent, which provides measurement technology applications for chemical analysis, life sciences, diagnostics, electronics and communications, plans to provide a “portfolio” of spectroscopy instruments valued at more than $1 million to researchers within UH’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Researchers plan to work on ways to identify and measure the constituents in geological specimens, as well as separate, identify and measure the “thousands of compounds found in crude oil samples. Shale gas research would investigate “the science behind the extraction of shale gas and liquids” to aid in evaluating potential production of particular formations and avoid “detrimental environmental impact to groundwater.”