It might be another month before crude oil production in North Dakota returns to normal, the state regulator said on Friday.
Extreme weather has eaten into crude oil production in North Dakota to the tune of hundreds of thousands of barrels so far—with the cold weather creating power outages and shutting down oil refineries. It has essentially cut crude oil production in North Dakota by half, cutting out 650,000 bpd from its typical 1.24 million bpd of oil production.
The North Dakota Pipeline Authority said on Friday that production was now down between 350,000 bpd to 400,000 bpd for oil, and 0.95 BCFD and 1.10 BCFD for gas—leaving about 30% still offline due to the extreme cold weather and operational challenges.
On top of production outages, oil spills and other incidents have been reported in Bakken oilfields, where windchills have fallen in recent days to -70F. But subzero temperatures are not over for oil country just yet, with the cold snap expected for another few days.
The cold temperatures didn’t just knock out oil and production in North Dakota. Frozen gas wells resulted in the lowest level of production in 11 months over this last weekend, Reuters estimates predicted. And while the cold weather is tightening oil and gas supplies, it is also creating an increase in demand as consumers try to stay warm.
The cold snap in the United States has collided with other supply-tightening factors, such as tensions in the Red Sea that have caused oil tankers to take the long way around.
The tightening supply and temporary oil and gas production curtailments will come as welcome relief for OPEC, which looks to be struggling to live up to its oil production cut promises for January.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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