Barrels

North Dakota recently exhibited new examples of how continued low global crude oil prices can have a socioeconomic impact on local communities and drive research to find more efficient ways to extract oil and gas from the Bakken Shale.

In the drought-scarred West and the current era of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), California’s preponderance of water produced in conjunction with oil is gaining more attention among industry and government leaders.

North Dakota’s robust oil production is racing toward the 900,000 b/d level and could hit 1.6 million b/d by 2017, but with that growth the state will face stiffer challenges in terms of the growth of infrastructure.

Oil and gas patch output is typically measured in barrels or cubic feet, but gross domestic product (GDP) is another yardstick by which to chart growth, and that’s particularly true in North Dakota, home to the Bakken Shale, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Friday.

Range Resources Corp. won permission from a Texas appeals court to proceed with a defamation lawsuit seeking $3 million in damages from a man who accused the company of tainting his drinking water with drilling activities in the Barnett Shale (see Shale Daily, April 4). Two of the company’s claims against Steven Lipsky were allowed to stand by the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth. However, it ordered the trial court in Weatherford, TX, to dismiss Range’s claims against Lipsky’s wife, Shyla, and environmental consultant Alisa Rich, who was hired to assist in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs have claimed that Range tainted the Lipsky water well, but the Railroad Commission of Texas found otherwise after it investigated. While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also had blamed Range for contaminating the well, the agency later backed down (see Shale Daily, Feb. 13; Feb. 21, 2012).

Production from North American shale plays will continue to keep natural gas prices from increasing significantly any time soon, Royal Dutch Shell plc CEO Peter Voser told financial analysts in London Thursday.

Supporters of an “environmental bill of rights” charter amendment in Mansfield, OH, prevailed at the polls on Tuesday, but opponents of the measure fear it could be used beyond its intended purpose — to possibly block wastewater injection wells — and applied to other types of business.

The initial phase of Enterprise Products Partners LP’ Enterprise Crude Houston (Echo) storage terminal is complete and the facility is receiving deliveries of crude oil. Separately, the partnership said its sixth natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionator at Mont Belvieu, TX, has entered operation.

With an emphasis on oil over natural gas, Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy) continued to shatter company production records in barrels of oil equivalent (boe) globally and domestically, Oxy senior executives said Thursday. At 755,000 boe Oxy’s daily oil/gas production was the highest in its history; and its U.S. totals of 455,000 boe set a record for the sixth straight quarter.