User:Angelo2415/Hydraulic Fracking in North Dakota

Oil and natural gas production in North Dakota is concentrated in western North Dakota in the Bakken and Three Forks formations, which are located in the Williston Basin. According to the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, there were 11,681 wells that were hydraulically fractured as of May 2017. Hydraulically fractured wells accounted for 95.7 percent of oil and gas production in the state. Oil wells of this type in North Dakota generally require approximately 25 acre-feet of fresh water for the drilling and hydraulic fracturing process, necessitating access to reliable water supplies. The effectiveness of fracking has allowed North Dakota to become the second largest oil-producing state in the United States. Drillers in North Dakota are left with significant byproducts that can have a number of environmental impacts. Typically, operators will “flare” the gas, or burn it off to reduce the total waste product. Flaring has been exacerbated by protracted pipeline construction processes as well as by changes in technology, which have increased natural gas production by 16 percent. State regulatory intervention is aimed at decreasing flaring, eventually possibly returning North Dakota gas capture rates to where they stood at the very beginning of the Bakken boom—95%. Dunn County filed a civil suit over the location of an oil waste treatment facility, with some residents arguing that the facility should be located in areas that have been zoned for industrial use rather than near residential communities. Residents in these nearby “fracking zones” have also claimed that the lingering employees of oil companies are also a problem. Recent regulatory efforts have included requirements tailored to truck companies: these entities must register their trucks and employees alongside installing tracking monitors which will relay information to a central dispatch regarding the contents of trucks and the identity of their drivers, among other information.