Here’s how much oil production was lost in North Dakota because of the recent frigid weather—700,000 barrels a day.
That’s the figure from Lynn Helms, Director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, who offered his etimate after historic low temperatures stopped oil and gas operations in the Bakken. It was the impact on the state’s daily production of 1.3 million barrels a day.
It also undoubtedly affected the numerous Oklahoma oil and gas companies with major operations in the Bakken.
“People can’t go out and work on the wells and so it’s very hard to put them back on. It will be a long, slow recovery. A lot of times these things take a month from the time that it hits until we see back to normal production,” said Helms, according to a report by KFYR TV news.
He also anticipates this week’s warmer weather will likely result in more leaks and equipment failure. The subzero weather last week resulted in more than five dozen such incidents.
“We’re expecting this next week when we go into warmer weather that we are going to have problems again. Hopefully, our oil and gas operators are going to be proactive and get out there and try to hit some of that off, let’s hope.”
As of Tuesday, the state was able to resume production but was still down about 300,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
