Incoming IOGCC chair Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant and ND Dept. of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms visit during the annual meeting  in Long Beach, California.

Of the U.S. shale plays, the North Dakota Bakken has 17% of the total and California's Monterey has 63% of predicted potential. However, it will likely take at least five years to develop a framework to bring that play into development given political and regulatory hurdles. Dr. Fred Aminzadeh said that California oil production fell by 45% from 1985-2010. California has the potential for 15.5 billion barrels, or 2/3s of the country's shale potential. The Monterey formation oil has the consistency of silly putty, he said, so it's not responding to fracture techniques that work in other parts of the country. He doesn't think steam is the final answer and that other technologies would need to be developed. California off shore could have longer legs as done in other parts of the country but on shore, the formation can dip and rise like a rollercoaster track. He led the USC-Induced Seismicity and Reservoir Monitoring Consortia to look at California's oil potential.

Last legislative session in California, there were nine bills calling for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. One comprehensive bill passed and the bill, Senate Bill 4, didn't have support from the oil industry or the environmental groups, said Cathy Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association. The Monterey shale play has the potential, she said, for 2.8 million jobs in 2020. She said there are groups active in California that don't want fossil fuels to be a part of the energy mix, no matter what. Kern County, CA, has 90% of the hydraulic fracturing activity.   

Dr. Mark Nechodon, CA Department of Conservation, said the knowledge bases are so different in his state that he sees a need to have his strategic management team always looking at emerging public concerns so that they can be addressed with science and fact.

The North Dakota Petroleum Council (NDPC) received the Environmental Partnership award for the Oil Can! Picking up the Patch program launched in the spring of 2012. From this initiative, the oil companies began long-term prevention efforts from training videos at safety meetings to reduce litter in western North Dakota. NDPC Government Relations staffer Alexis Brinkman accepted the award on behalf of the NDPC, giving credit for the success to the oil and gas companies willing to organize 750 volunteers and pick up 1,600 bags of trash so far in the program.

 

The Executive Committee of the ND Association of Oil and Gas Producing Counties has agreed to join the broad-based coalition supporting North Dakotans for Common Sense Conservation. Why? It's the best way to defeat the ill-conceived proposed constitutional amendment that would commit five percent of North Dakota's oil extraction tax - conservatively estimated at $200 million a biennium - to a new fund with no clear idea of how it would be spent, yet mandate $2 million a week be spent on conservation projects.

We all support conservation efforts and safeguarding our environment, but this measure is the wrong approach. Here's why the Association opposes it:

• The supporters of this proposed constitutional amendment are being funded by out-of-state special interest groups. A report filed with the Secretary of State's office at the end of last year showed the group received 95 percent of its money from outside our state.

• It would divert billions of dollars of state funding that could otherwise be spent on schools, education, infrastructure, emergency services and tax relief.

• The money from this fund can be granted to state agencies, tribal and local governments, political subdivisions and non-profit groups. Some of the non-profits that will likely benefit from it would be the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, the Dakota Resource Council and other environmental and wilderness organizations.

• Putting this in our state's Constitution is not the proper way to fund conservation programs. Any changes to this constitutional amendment could only be corrected by another statewide vote. Passing this would set a dangerous precedence where every special group could try to secure funding through a ballot instead of the Legislature.

• Its advisory board members would be required to have a background in land conservation and/or conservation activism - likely ensuring that only conservation groups would be represented without the input of business or taxpayers.

The Association is among more than 20 diverse groups that are part of this coalition backing the North Dakotans for Common Sense Conservation. We support them because we already invest over $100 million per biennium in preservation and conservation in North Dakota.

WTI Crude: $94.21

Brent Crude: $103.79

Natural Gas: $3.57

ND Rig Count: 181