Berthold

A Massachusetts company with natural gas capture and flare recovery services has inked a deal with the three affiliated Native American tribes on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. The agreement is expected to help bring operators on the reservation in line with the state’s increasingly successful efforts to curb flaring.

With oil and natural gas production essentially flat in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale play, state officials have noted an uptick in drilling interest on the Fort Berthold Reservation while a statewide effort to reduce wellhead flared gas has hit a wall.

With one-third of North Dakota’s growing oil and natural gas production coming from the Fort Berthold Reservation lands, state officials said Tuesday the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has agreed informally that new anti-flaring rules would be enforced on the federally managed lands.

The Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in western North Dakota are considering building a natural gas processing plant, a facility that would complement an oil refinery slated to begin construction in the spring.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Wednesday approved a “land-into-trust” application submitted by the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in western North Dakota to build the first U.S. refinery in decades — in the heart of the Bakken shale formation.