Sept. Bakken Boom: ND Sets Another Oil Record

North Dakota pumped another record amount of oil in the month of September, producing more than 10 million barrels in a single month for the second month in a row and beating the previous record set in August by almost 50,000 barrels (see chart above, data here). Compared to September of last year, oil production has increased by 43.4%, and oil production in North Dakota has doubled in a little more than two years - from slightly fewer than 5 million barrels in June of 2008 to more than 10 million barrels in both August and September this year.  North Dakota's rich oil fields now produce 6% of America's domestic crude oil production, up from less than 2% in 2006 (data here).   Partly because of its ongoing oil boom in the Bakken area, North Dakota continues to lead the nation with the lowest unemployment rate at 3.7% in September, almost 6 full percentage points below the nation's average 9.6% rate. The oil boom has fueled an employment boom for oil workers in North Dakota (data here) - the number of oil-related jobs has grown from fewer than 4,000 at the beginning of 2005 to almost 9,000 in September of this year.Through September of this year, North Dakota has already produced more oil (81 million barrels) than all of last year (79.7 million barrels), and is on a pace to produce about 112 million barrels in 2010, which would be almost twice as much as 2008 (62.8 million barrels) and almost three times as much as 2007 (45.1 million barrels).  In recent years, North Dakota has surpassed oil production in Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico and Wyoming, and North Dakota, and has gone from the 9th highest producing oil state to the #4 rank now, behind only Texas, California and Alaska.