A "Wake-Up" Call for November Oil Production - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

A "Wake-Up" Call for November Oil Production

It's a wake-up call for North Dakota.

That's what Director of Mineral Resources Lynn Helms says about November oil production.

The latest numbers show production fell for the first time in nineteen months--by just over two percent.

Helms says for the most part mother nature is to blame.

Williams County was hit with its snowiest day since 1901 in November.

That shut down fracking and trucks for up to three days.

"That's why I called it a wake-up call. It brings to mind a lot of those factors. The fact that we are so tuned into Bakken and Three Forks development, so dependent on truck transportation, so dependent on hydraulic fracturing. Our expectation was for a two or three percent increase instead we got a 2.2 percent drop as a result of we believe the winter storm," says Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources.

He says winter weather may be a bigger concern than anyone anticipated.

However, he says he doesn't expect this weekends storm to have much of an impact on oil country.