North Dakota’s oil production dropped by 3.9 percent in May.
It dropped from 1,243,678 barrels per day in April, to 1,195, 120 in May.
"That was a little surprising," said North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources Assistant Director Mark Bohrer.
Bohrer said it was likely due to road restrictions, likely still in place, as well as lower-than-expected completion numbers.
"There was a fair amount of rain in May also, which likely slowed things down," Bohrer said.
And Bohrer said the load limits impacted frack crews.
"They have to move around," Bohrer said. "It's not like a drilling rig, where they can sit on a pad, and drill multiple wells without having to move. You need a lot of truck traffic to move those frack crews around."
Bohrer said 78 wells were permitted in May.
"That's a little lower than we would like," Bohrer said. "We feel we need to be in that 90 to 100 per month range to continue to grow production at that one to two percent level."
And Bohrer said preliminary reports show 55 new wells were completed in June. And he said that’s a little lower than hoped.
"We feel we need to be in that 90 to 100 range, to achieve production growth," Bohrer said.
Bohrer said 39 drilling rigs are working in the Bakken. And natural gas production was up – to 3.5 billion cubic feet per day. And Bohrer said only around five percent of natural gas was flared.
