Despite Obama: North Dakota passes 1 million barrels of oil a day milestone

Western North Dakota

Despite President Obama's bias against reliable fossil fuels and his anti-energy Energy Department, North Dakota reached a milestone--last month it surpassed the drilling landmark of one million barrels of petroleum per day.

From AP:

North Dakota's oil fields now represent more than 12 percent of all U.S. oil production, and more than 1 percent of global production — a situation unfathomable just a decade ago, when technology hadn't yet caught up to the challenge of extracting oil from the shale. Since then, the oil boom and the jobs it brings have transformed North Dakota, now home to the nation's fastest-growing cities and its lowest unemployment rate.

"Reaching the 1 million barrel a day mark is a tremendous and timely milestone for the petroleum industry and our state, but it is also a tremendous milestone for our nation," U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, a Republican, said in a statement, citing the need for the United States to build its domestic energy resources.

North Dakota joins Texas, Alaska, California and Louisiana as the only states ever to produce more than a million barrels per day. Of those, Texas is the only other state still producing above that level.

"Until April, only Texas, one Canadian province and 19 countries were producing 1 million barrels per day, putting North Dakota among the top oil producers in the entire world," said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, an oil lobbying group.

As recently as 1999 there were no oil rigs in the Peace Garden State.

The oil boom has ignited the economy of North Dakota--it has the lowest unemployment rate of the states.

The United States is poised to surpass the 1970 record of petroleum production--despite Obama.

Related post:

North Dakota oil boom even provides jobs for archaeologists

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