Whiting Petroleum Corp. is suspending plans to drill at 20 Bakken and Three Forks well sites as low oil prices continue to weigh heavily on the exploration and production company. The company, which controls 667,000 net acres in the Williston Basin that stretches across North Dakota and Montana, had not yet begun drilling the wells, a person familiar with company operations said. Whiting is also shelving a gathering pipeline project it hired Tesoro Logistics to build. OPEC’s goal to shut in high-cost oil supply has driven down prices, forcing highly indebted producers in North Dakota to close wells or suspend plans to bring new ones online. The state’s rig count dropped to 41, the lowest since July 2009, according to North Dakota’s Dept. of Mineral Resources. Production fell by 30,000 barrels a day in December from the previous month, Jonathan Garrett, an upstream research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said […]