Fully developing the oil field in North Dakota may take another 16 to 18 years. That is the comment from Lynn Helms in an interview on “Platts Energy Week”.
North Dakota’s oil/gas boom to get even bigger, official says is the article that discusses the interview.
Other interesting comments-
As I’ve read elsewhere, he said there are an additional 35,000 wells to drill. At a rate of 3,000 per year now, that would be 13 years at the current rate of drilling.
There is not enough infrastructure to get gas to refineries. He estimates that 30% of the gas coming out of the ground is flared off. It’s just not possible to get that gas to market, so it is burned off.. Lots of gas pipeline is being installed on the scale of cost around $4 billion. Yes, $4 billion invested just to carry the gas to refiners.
Other big challenges are insufficient housing for workers and pipelines for oil.
As I’ve said before, it looks to me this boom is going to run for decades.