North Dakota's booming oil production probably won't be affected much by the Gulf oil spill and the state may actually benefit from the disaster in some ways, a North Dakota Industrial Commission official said Tuesday.
Bruce Hicks, assistant director of the commission's oil and gas division, spoke to Grand Forks Republicans in a crowded meeting room at the Bronze Boot Steakhouse and Lounge as part of the local party's politics and lunch series.
When asked if April's Gulf spill, which has become the worst oil spill in the country's history, could impact the state's rapidly growing oil production, Hicks said the differences are like "night and day.
"We're talking about drilling at the surface where we can get to those controls," he said about North Dakota production.
That's vastly different than offshore, deepwater drilling rigs -- which require underwater robots to address problems like the Gulf spill, Hicks said.
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And a moratorium on offshore drilling after that disaster means "we might only see a benefit from it," he said, because it could prompt oil workers along the Gulf to head up to North Dakota in search of jobs.
N.D. issues
But there is some discussion in Congress to "do away" with hydraulic fracturing, a newer method of getting to oil that is largely the reason why the state's oil production continues to grow.
"It would completely inundate North Dakota," Hicks said. "We would be at a standstill."
But he said he doesn't think that ban would ever happen.
Hicks pointed out most states first drilled up "all the easy oil," the stuff toward the surface that requires more standard methods.
As those supplies are depleted and a lack of pressure means less oil gets to the surface, places all over the country switch to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling -- like what's happening in western North Dakota's Bakken oil formation.
"It's not only North Dakota that it would be devastating to," he said. "It's all across the United States."
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The state's rapid growth in oil production is causing some other issues, too.
The hydraulic fracturing process creates fractures in rocks that extend from a wellbore, increasing the amount of oil that can be recovered from horizontal drilling.
Advancements in the technology have caused estimates of North Dakota's recoverable oil to jump to about 4 billion barrels. And daily oil production in the state is now at 284,000 barrels, well above the 148,000 barrels per day peak in the mid-1980s oil boom.
But Hicks said the process requires two main components: water and sand, and lots of it.
Officials are looking into finding more local sources for the sand, which now mostly comes from Michigan and Canada. Getting enough water to keep up with demand for more wells is becoming even more difficult, Hicks said.
Lake Sakakawea in central North Dakota could be the best source because he estimated 1 inch of lake level contains 10 billion gallons of water, enough for 5,000 wells because each requires about 2 million gallons for fracturing.
That 1 inch of Lake Sakakawea would be enough for more than three years of wells at the current rate of drilling rigs, Hicks said.
Hydraulic fracturing is also an "extremely expensive" technology -- running about $1 million or $1.5 million per well these days -- but it's also "the key to production" in the Bakken formation.
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"All Bakken wells must be hydraulically fractured to produce," Hicks said. "I think that oil and gas is not going to go away, especially in our futures, and we need to keep our production up."
Ryan Johnson is a reporter at the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald, which is owned by Forum Communications Co.
