North Dakota Oil Production Hits two years low

Rail shipments of petroleum from Midwestern oil fields to East Coast refineries have plummeted as North Dakota’s oil production has fallen to a two-year low.

Production dropped below 1 million barrels per day for the first time in more than two years, officials said Thursday — yet another reminder that the drilling boom is over in the country's No. 2 oil state due to the slump in world oil prices.

The state produced an average of 981,039 barrels of oil daily in August, down from 1.029 million in July, the state Department of Mineral Resources said. Oil production numbers typically lag at least two months.

Those numbers are reflected in the crude shipment data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which show rail shipments from the Midwestern region were down 49 percent from the previous year in July.

Shipments from the Midwest to the East Coast — which represent more than half of the region’s production and move over rail lines crossing Minnesota and Wisconsin — were down by similar numbers.

The 5.4 million barrels that traveled to East Coast refineries in July was even 15 percent lower than in July 2013 when production was on the rise. That works out to fewer than three trains per day, about half the number that railroads reported to state officials in 2014.

East Coast shipments peaked in November 2014 at 13.8 million barrels, according to the EIA.