Crude oil would cost at least $150 a barrel due to supply disruptions in the Middle East and North Africa were it not for rising production in North Dakota and Texas, US Energy Information Administration (EIA) chief Adam Sieminski said in an interview.
According to Reuters, oil output from the oil-rich Bakken, Permian and Eagle Ford shale formations in those two states, as well as other smaller formations around the nation, has spiked in the past decade to more than 4 million barrels per day.
That new oil has helped the United States weather supply disruptions from Libya, Iraq and other one-time major oil producers in which political and military turmoil has sharply depressed production, Sieminski said ahead of the North Dakota Petroleum Council’s annual meeting.
“If we did not have the growth in North Dakota, in the Eagle Ford and the Permian, oil could be $150 (per barrel),” Sieminski said. “There is a long list of countries with petroleum outages that add up to about 3 million barrels per day.”
While some have questioned whether North Dakota’s oil boom will continue or peter out, as similar oil booms did in the 1950s and 1980s, Sieminski said he expects production to continue and could eventually hit 2 million barrels per day.
