EIA: Texas, N. Dakota provided nearly half of US crude production in April

Crude oil production in the US during April totaled 8.4 million b/d, with Texas and North Dakota accounting for 4 million b/d, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration's Petroleum Supply Monthly Report.

Texas production reached 3 million b/d for the first time since the late 1970s, more than doubling production in the past 3 years. North Dakota production, meanwhile, surpassed 1 million b/d for the first time in the state’s history, almost tripling its production over the same period.

Crude production volumes in North Dakota and Texas from April 2010 to April 2014 increased at average rates of 37%/year and 28%/year, respectively, compared with 2%/year average growth in the rest of the country.

During that period, North Dakota’s and Texas’s combined share of total US crude production rose to 48% from 26%, as the Gulf of Mexico’s crude production share declined to 17% from 27%.

EIA indicates that gains in Texas crude production come primarily from unconventional tight oil and shale reservoirs in the Eagle Ford shale in the Western Gulf basin, where drilling has increasingly targeted oil-rich areas, and multiple reservoirs within the Permian basin in West Texas that have seen a significant increase in horizontal, oil-directed drilling.

North Dakota's increased production comes primarily from the Bakken formation, also a tight oil reservoir, in the Williston basin, where production growth has spurred a rise in crude-by-rail transportation, EIA says.

The largest monthly average increase in production since April 2011 has come from the Eagle Ford, with an average monthly increase exceeding 32,000 b/d, more than doubling the 14,000 b/d increase in the Permian. Production from the Bakken increased 19,000 b/d on average each month over the same period.