North Dakota could help America become a dominant player in the oil industry after experts found a significant amount of undeveloped oil resources yet to be extracted.
Geologists determined the middle Three Forks reservoir in McKenzie County has another 10.5 billion gallons of oil worth $18.6 billion just 50 feet lower than where drilling is currently operating.
The reservoir is part of the Bakken Petroleum System, located in Montana and North Dakota, which has the largest oil deposits in the US, churning out 474.5 million barrels per year.
North Dakota’s portion of the oil system produces 1.2 million barrels per day, but the state’s governor Kelly Armstrong said ‘are still leaving over 80 percent of oil in the ground.’
Armstrong told DailyMail.com that he believes ‘North Dakota’s untapped oil reserves can play a major role in the United States becoming not only energy independent but energy dominant.’
McKenzie County is comprised of seven towns home to just 14,600 people and officials said more drilling in the area would see a significant economy boost.
There are more than 360 wells pulling oil from Three Forks, which have produced over 92 million barrels of oil since operations began in 2013.
But the untapped resources have sparked calls to add another 600 wells and drill deeper that would see another 258 million barrels of oil.
The middle Three Forks Formation was found to have 10.5 billion gallons of untapped oil
The reservoir is part of the Bakken Petroleum System, located in Montana and North Dakota, which has the largest oil deposits in the US, churning out 474.5 million barrels per year
North Dakota subsurface geologist Tim Nesheim said: ‘There have been about 20 wells drilled in this middle Three Forks unit per year for the last six years, but it probably should be double to triple that.’
The Bakken Petroleum System is part of the larger Williston Basin, which, according to a 2013 USGS study, has 7.4 billion barrels of oil that could supply the nation for at least 100 years.
It is comprised of two interconnected formations: the Bakken Formation and the Three Forks Formation, meaning there are essentially two main oil fields considered part of this system.
Geologists have considered Bakken rather mature, due to constant extracting, but the discovery in Three Forks could give it a second life.
Nesheim told Inforum that many drillers assumed additional drilling in the area would only lead to faster production of oil and gas rather than higher production, but he and his colleague Ted Starns suggested the opposite.
After we did our work, we believe that it’s more than that, that when you drill middle Three Forks wells, you’re getting more oil out of the ground long term,’ Nesheim said.
‘You’re not just speeding up your recovery, but you’re adding to your long-term recovery.
‘We’ve done some of the research, and our hope is that companies will take our work and build on it, kind of giving them enough of a head start to do more.’
They found developing the reservoir could add up to two million barrels of recoverable oil per 1,280-acre spacing unit, an area of land assigned to a well or a group of wells with set limits on how much oil can be extracted.
Scientists are urging companies to set up more wells to extract the oil that is worth more than $18 billion
The Parshall Field was set up to extract oil from Bakken in 2006, with oil and gas companies focussing on the Middle Bakken with horizontal wells.
The upper Three Forks developed between 2008 and 2010 and three years later, the middle Three Forks began producing oil.
The more than 360 wells in middle Three Forks amounted to about two percent of the drilling activity in the Bakken-Three Forks petroleum system, and about 1.7 percent of the total oil production to date, Minot Daily News reported.
The geologists conducted two studies, completed in 2024, which looked at oil production from 593 horizontal wells across 51 drilling areas, each covering 1,280 acres.
They found 17 areas had a clear increase in oil production from developing the middle Three Forks formation.
The discovery comes as President Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods, with a 10 percent tax on oil, natural gas and electricity.
According to estimates from Lipow Oil Associates, a gallon of gas could increase by as much as 25 cents.
The national average for a gallon of regular gas on Monday stood at $3.098, according to the American Automobile Association.
The tank of an average car is 15 gallons, so a 25 cent increase would mean Americans would typically have to pay between $4 and $5 more for a tank of gas.
The US imports some 4 million barrels per day of Canadian oil, 70 percent of which is processed by refiners in the Midwest, Reuters reported.
