The Oil and Gas Journal reports on a Bakken formation well that tested over 2000 barrels of oil per day and 3.7 million cubic feet per day of natural gas.

North Dakota has seen such an increase in natural gas and oil production – mainly from shales – that they don’t have the pipeline capacity to get it all to market. An article at BusinessWeek.com explores new pipeline projects for the state.

North Dakota now has a record number of active oil and gas wells and is producing record volumes of oil and gas each day. The state will probably displace California as the #3 state for oil production. More in the Washington Post.

The agenda for the Shale Gas Drilling & Completions 2010 conference to be held May 26-27 is now online. The conference will “deliver key insight into applying cutting-edge drilling and completions techniques used throughout diverse shale projects in the US & Canada. Leading shale producers will share real life examples of their drilling and completions success and challenges – including experience from the Barnett, Haynesville, Horn River, Marcellus, Woodford and Fayetteville shale plays.”

“Baker Hughes reported that the number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States has recovered since the low levels seen in June 2009. The rig count surpassed its previous post-1993 peak of November 2008 on February 1, 2010 (see Figure) and was 5 percent (24 rigs) higher as of March 12. Half of the overall increase in rig counts since June 2009 has been in the Permian Basin of West Texas, where rigs drill primarily conventional vertical wells. Just under one-fifth of the increase has occurred in the Williston Basin, straddling Montana and North Dakota, where horizontal drilling programs have rapidly increased production from the Bakken Shale.” Quoted from the EIA This Week in Petroleum.

Shale has been hot in the news over the past few years because of the numerous natural gas plays in the United States and other countries. An article on the Reuters website speculates that oil from shale will be the next big wave in the news with the Niobrara Shale of Colorado, the Bakken Shale of North Dakota and the Eagle Ford Shale of Texas making the initial headlines.

Thomas Gardner, research director for Simmons & Company International, says that natural gas companies have become the “victims of their own success”. They have discovered enough gas to depress the price. More at the Star-Telegram.com website.

“The U.S. Department of Energy announces the release of Modern Shale Gas Development in the United States: A Primer. The Primer provides regulators, policy makers, and the public with an objective source of information on the technology advances and challenges that accompany deep shale gas development.” Quoted from fossil.energy.gov. Download the .pdf

Ziff Energy Group has a press release on their website predicting that unconventional gas plays now active across North America will account for 53% of the continent’s gas production by 2020.

USGS reports that recent email messages encouraging people to write to their congressional representatives about oil extraction from the Bakken Formation were part of a scam.  Read more in the Los Angeles Times.

A post at the Clastic Detritus blog discusses the types of resources present in the Bakken Formation, looking specifically at the USGS fact sheet for the Bakken undiscovered resource assessment. The author points out that these are “undiscovered” “resources” and explain that means less than many people will read into the numbers.

MegaWest Energy Corporation plans to try horizontal drilling and hydrofracking technology that has successfully been used in the Bakken Formation in an effort to produce oil from the Heath Shale in Montana. More in an article at GreatFallsTribune.com

Shares of Questar dropped over 8% on Thursday. Share prices of that company and others in the natural gas sector might have advanced faster than their ability to deliver gas. Their Haynesville and Bakken Shale properties have been featured in the news but most of the production can not be sold for a year or more. See more in an article by The Salt Lake Tribune.

XTO Energy spent $1.8 billion to acquire 352,000 net acres of Bakken Shale leasehold in Montana and North Dakota. Their engineers estimate that the properties hold 68 million barrels of oil. More at Pegasus News.

The North Dakota Industrial Commission’s statistics reveal that April’s oil production was a new monthly record. An average of 150,578 barrels of oil were produced per day and that beat the old record of 147,774 per day set in August 1984. More information in an article at BusinessWeek.com.