701-566-9300This month saw the Legislative Interim Committee called Energy Development Transmission listening to Director of Mineral Resources Lynn Helms. Mr. Helms went through a presentation which explained how critical CO2 pipelines coming into the state from the south, west and north will be for reaching the potential harvest of oil and gas in North Dakota. Our $8 billion Legacy Fund, $6 billion Common Schools Trust Fund, many improvements on roads and bridges for our counties and townships, are some of the results of the approximately 5 billion barrels of oil taken so far from the Bakken Formation. There are additional examples, but what he was trying to emphasize to the committee is that without significant CO2 coming in to pressurize oilfields which allows enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods to extract billions of barrels more, the Bakken will go into terminal decline by 2030.
Mr. Helms told the committee that 90% or more of the core area of the Bakken is drilled out, and that without CO2 coming in, we will harvest only about 16% of the Bakken potential. The billions of barrels left in the ground and the stranded benefits to our state in that case would be stunning, to say the least.
That is the key to keeping benefits to agriculture, said Representative Mike Brandenburg. He told his committee that we have lost corn and bean markets to Brazil because that country embraced the CO2 industry earlier and because of that, North Dakota farmers have seen steep commodity price declines. As always, if interested in more details, watch the committee hearing. There is a lot to learn.