Helms

With the exception of average daily natural gas output, North Dakota production and related activities saw declines in November, a downward trend that is likely to continue through the winter, according to Lynn Helms, director of the state’s Department of Mineral Resources.

While reporting everything except gas capture as a plus in North Dakota’s most recent production statistics, Lynn Helms, the state’s chief oil/natural gas regulator, said last Tuesday that the worst of the two-plus years of depressed oil prices is over.

North Dakota faces increasingly stiff competition for investment capital from the burgeoning exploration/production activity in West Texas unfolding in the Permian Basin, according to North Dakota’s chief oil/natural gas regulator, Lynn Helms.

As production continues to fall further below the 1 million b/d level, North Dakota producers and state officials are casting an anxious eye on the political fight surrounding the completion of the Dakota Access oil pipeline and developments thousands of miles away in the Middle East, where OPEC ministers are considering a production cutback.

Oil production in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale play dropped below 1 million b/d in August and is expected to stay in the 900,000 b/d area for the next nine to 10 months, according to Lynn Helms, director of the state Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), who released the latest production statistics on Thursday.

North Dakota oil prices and production are expected to stay down for the rest of this year as producers reallocate resources to other places, such as the Permian Basin in Texas and Oklahoma’ SCOOP (South Central Oklahoma Oil Province) and STACK (Sooner Trend of the Anadarko Basin, mostly Canadian and Kingfisher counties), according to Lynn Helms, director of the state’s Department of Mineral Resources.

For the thousands of early, limited-stage hydraulically fractured (fracked) wells in North Dakota’s Bakken shale play, there is a large potential re-fracking market, and it could be boosted by a new technology using “diverters,” said to Lynn Helms, director of the North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources.

Natural gas production was up a little more than 1% while crude was down about 2%, or about 20,000 b/d in June, the most recent month for complete statistics in North Dakota, state officials said Friday.

North Dakota recovered the two drilling rigs it lost since April, but oil prices are expected to remain weak through 3Q2016 and possibly extend into 2Q2017, Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) Director Lynn Helms said.