From February 2010 to February 2013, onshore oil production (including the production of crude oil and liquid hydrocarbons called “lease condensate”) within the Lower 48 States increased by 64 percent, driven largely by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Seven states achieved particularly high increases: North Dakota, 198 percent; Texas,…

This March, North Dakotans overcame brutal winter storms and produced a record 782,934 barrels of oil per day, a 35 percent increase over production last March. This increase was made possible largely by a 26 percent expansion in the number of wells, with 1,712 wells added over the year. What…

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks North Dakota’s 3.3 percent unemployment rate as the lowest in the country. Its cities of Bismark, Fargo, and Grand Forks rank first, second, and seventh on the list of U.S. cities with the lowest levels of unemployment. The key driver of the relatively…

American energy producers keep finding and developing more usable oil and natural gas. Recently the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) increased its estimate of the recoverable oil in the Williston Basin spanning parts of Montana and the Dakotas—the region famous for Bakken shale. The USGS’s new estimate of 7.34 billion barrels…

On March 26, construction crews started work on the Dakota Prairie Refinery, the first new oil refinery in the contiguous United States since 1977 and the first in North Dakota since 1956. The new refinery will process 20,000 of the 770,000 barrels of crude that oil producers pump out of…

In the Southern Texas county of La Salle in 2008, explorers at Petrohawk Energy Corporation took the first steps of what would become an oil producing revolution in the region. The company focused on developing the Eagle Ford Shale, a formation of siliciclastic carbonates and shale less than 300 feet…

Since the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. petroleum consumption and imports have declined. Simultaneously, domestic oil production has increased. On Wednesday March 20, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) ran the headline “U.S. crude oil production on track to surpass imports for first time since 1995.” The expectation is that imports will…

It’s been a little over a year since BP, once one of the world’s leading solar power companies, announced that it was exiting the solar power market. According to the company’s website, “BP Alternative Energy is focusing on those sectors of the energy industry where we can profitably grow our…