Bakken After DAPL Is in Operation: Still Hard to Compete

North Dakota’s Bakken shale play will remain at certian disadvantage against Texas and Oklahoma even after the DAPL pipeline is in full service.

The break-even cost drilling cost for the basin is estimated to drop to $52 a barrel from $55 due to shift away from rail transportation to the DAPL. However, that compares with about $46 on average in Texas’s Permian play and $41 in Colorado’s DJ basin.

The 1,172-mile (1,886-kilometer) pipeline is designed to ship as much as 570,000 barrels of crude.

Bakken was named for Henry Bakken, a North Dakota farmer whose land hosted the first well in the region in the early 1950s,

It is expected to produce an average of 1.1 million barrels a day of oil this year and next, a figure lower than the 1.2 million barrels produced in 2015, according to the Energy Information Administration.

At the same time, Permian production is expected to reach 2.9 million barrels a day by the end of next year, the EIA said in July.