North Dakota Currently Has 38 Oil Rigs Drilling

Energy Awareness

October is Energy Awareness Month (plus Electric Cooperative Month) and the Daniels County Leader wants its readers educated on the many facets of the subject because it plays such an enormous role in our daily lives. Everything in our lives relates to energy! Example: how would you fare without electricity, propane or heating oil during a cold northeast Montana winter? With that said, here are some notes, quotes, facts and figures to digest:

• It has been 65 years since oil was discovered in Sheridan County (seat Plentywood) and more than 120 million barrels of crude oil has been pumped out of the ground. Sheridan County News Editor Joe Nistler took his readers through the years of how production grew and then dropped. In 1957 the first oil tanker cars left Outlook. The year 1962 was the first year with at least one million barrels produced; 1965 first year with at least 2 million barrels produced; 1980 first year with at least 3 million barrels produced; 1985 only year with at least 4 million barrels produced; 1987 last year with at least 3 million barrels produced; 1998 last year with at least 2 million barrels produced; 2014 last year with at least one million barrels produced. In 2018 Sheridan County produced 638,000 barrels of crude oil.

• Nistler also reported Sheridan County’s oil pro-duction in five-year intervals. Here are the number of barrels produced: 424,624 in 1961; 2,952,411 in 1966; 2,370,232 in 1971; 1,767,800 in 1976; 3,463,688 in 1981; 3,411,769 in 1986; 2,089,657 in 1991; 1,662,863 in 1996; 1,737,610 in 2001; 1,679,749 in 2006; 1,283,334 in 2011; 726,129 in 2016; 531,071 in 2021.

• As of May 2022, the Montana Board of Oil and Gas Conservation reported Sheridan County had 306 total oil wells. Of that total 188 were considered inactive or unplugged. Of those 188 six are identified as orphaned with no responsible par...