Production of oil in North Dakota—home to the vast majority of all wells sunk into the Bakken shale oil formation—declined in January, the latest month with data available directly from the state. The state of North Dakota has yet to release their own compilation of production statistics for January 2015—those are due out March 12 (tomorrow, as of this writing). I expect they will likewise show a drop. This runs counter to expectations from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) that Bakken oil production would continue rising through March, only starting to decline in April. It also raises questions about whether total U.S. oil production may already be declining—and that the decline simply hasn’t shown up yet in available data. To find this out, I compiled the production data from the state, and show it split into three groups: 1. the old wells (mainly conventional drilling), 2. the new wells, […]