Oil production in the US state of North Dakota has increased by more than a third – to 1.4m barrels a day – two years after a controversial pipeline connected it to big markets further south, bolstering the nation’s status as the world’s leading source of new supply. The 1,172-mile Dakota Access pipeline , which runs from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota to an Illinois oil storage and transport hub, is now “essentially full”, according to Genscape, a commodities data company.
Production growth – second only to that of Texas – is set to continue. Energy Transfer, the operator, is pushing ahead with plans to add pumps to raise the pipeline’s capacity above its original 570,000 b/d limit.
Dakota Access was “a game-changer for Bakken crude,” said Rory Sabino, vice-president at Continental Resources, whose production in the region climbed 82 percent between the first quarters of 2017 and 2019. Energy Transfer, meanwhile, had seen a “tremendous amount of interest” in increasing the pipeline’s capacity to as high as 800,000 b/d, Marshall McCrea, its chief commercial officer, told analysts last month.
A competing route, the $1.6bn Liberty Pipeline, last week received a green light to connect the Bakken and Rockies production areas to the tank complex of Cushing, Oklahoma starting in 2021.
In the interim, some producers and merchants have hired more trains to move oil from North Dakota to distant refineries. Loadings of crude by rail fell to about 115,000 b/d soon after Dakota Access entered service in 2017 but have since surpassed 300,000 b/d, said Ryan Saxton, director of midstream oil at Genscape.