Value of oil production in North Dakota is plummeting

Dollar value of the crude oil produced in North Dakota each month is down from about $3B last summer to about $1.2B in January. That is a drop of about 61%.

I have accumulated the average monthly sweet crude price mentioned in the monthly Directors Cut and combined that with the total production for the month.

Here is what I calculated for the monthly value of production.

 3-15 value by month

That is based on the monthly production in the previous post, combined with the average price shown here:

 3-15 price by month

The high points were $2.95B in June 2014 and $2.97B in July, by my calculations. The January production is worth $1.16B based on the numbers mentioned in the Director’s Cut.

The dramatic drop in the value of production is predominately due to the drop in price.

Keep in mind the barrels of production has been going up steadily with only a small (3%) drop in January. The price has collapsed in North Dakota.

Remember those billions of dollars of value appearing every month are from oil that was untouchable a decade ago. Very cool.

As you look at that graph of dollar value above, think what a comparable graph might look like for members of OPEC.  Who in order to meet their spending budgets need $100 oil. Or higher.

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