The One-Time Heart of Shale May Never Boom Again With Dakota Access Shut
- Court orders closure of major oil pipeline as production drops
- Shutdown is latest blow to once-mighty Bakken, now struggling
It was once the center of America’s shale boom -- a vast reservoir of crude unleashed by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, turning North Dakota into the second-largest oil producer in the U.S. and helping transform the nation into the world’s largest supplier.
These days, the Bakken is looking like anything but a boom. Drilling in the once-prolific shale formation straddling North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada has all but halted -- another victim of the pandemic that sapped fuel demand worldwide. Output is believed to have fallen by as much as half a million barrels a day this year. Even before the virus, drillers there were struggling to compete with fast-improving margins in Texas’s Permian Basin. Now, the looming shutdown of the Dakota Access pipeline that carries more than a third of the region’s oil to market threatens to keep the play from booming ever again.