Bakken Has Hard Time Competing With Other Plays Even After DAPL Is In Operation

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.