North Dakota oil production is back to more than 1.2 million barrels per day.
It happened in August.
"The last time we were over 1.2 million barrels a day was nearly three years ago, in November of 2020," said North Dakota Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms during his monthly "Director's Cut" briefing.
Helms says after that, production plummeted due, in part, to the COVID pandemic. He said the August numbers were three percent higher than July’s.
"This is a lot like the good old days, when we would see 3, 4 and 5 percent production increases, month over month," Helms said.
But Helms said this may be the last time for a while where there would be this kind of increase.
"When we look at the number of completions, and we look at the number of wells waiting on completion, we can see that we don't have a large inventory of wells waiting," Helms said. "And we're just going to be completing wells as they're drilled."
In his report, Helms said North Dakota is still capturing 95 percent of the natural gas – above the goal of 91 percent, set by the state Industrial Commission, but down one percent from July.
