All of North Dakota’s crude production was back online on Friday, state regulators said, after recovering from an arctic blast from a winter storm that has disrupted production nationwide.
North Dakota is the third-largest oil-producing U.S. state, and output totaled 1.189 million barrels per day in November, the latest monthly data from the state’s Industrial Commission showed. Nationwide as of Thursday, crude production outages totaled 500,000 bpd, down 100,000 bpd from Wednesday. Outages peaked at around 2 million bpd over the weekend. U.S. crude output was forecast to total 13.76 million bpd in January, the Energy Information Administration said this month, putting Thursday’s outage at around 3.6% of total output. Oil prices retreated on Friday after surging 3% to a five-month high on Thursday on rising concerns that global supplies could be disrupted if the U.S. attacks Iran.
“Global supplies remain ample but demand remains a bit stronger than expected, and the latest cold spell has hampered U.S. production,” said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president of trading at BOK Financial.
(Reporting by Georgina McCartney in Houston; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)