Oil and Gas

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The Dakota Prairie Grasslands, Little Missouri National Grasslands, consisting of portions of McKenzie, Billings, Golden Valley and Slope Counties are all part of the Williston Basin in North Dakota, that has a long history of oil and gas production. 

While exploration began in the early 1900s, technology limited depth drilling to reach deep oil deposits. However, in 1951, the first major petroleum discovery of a well called Clarence Iverson No. 1, located in a wheat field near Tioga in Williams County, which launched a drilling boom in the Williston Basin. 

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, an oil boom peaked at 154,000 barrels per day at an average price of over $35 a barrel of crude oil.

By early 2000’s, a major oil boom began in the Bakken Formation, a shale formation that extends beyond North Dakota into Eastern Montana and neighboring territories of Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada. 

The Bakken boom made North Dakota the fourth-largest oil-producing state in the country and one of the largest onshore oil-producing regions in the United States. In the early 2010s, thousands of oil wells produced millions of barrels of petroleum monthly.  Currently North Dakota is producing approximately 1.1 million barrels of oil per day and 3.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. 

The USDA Forest Service along with the Bureau of Land Management and the State of North Dakota administers federal surface and private mineral oil and gas production and leasing activities on the grasslands, including the Little Missouri and Cedar River National Grasslands. 

Public land visitors are advised to exercise caution and avoid all permitted oil, gas, and mineral production sites due to potential health hazards and safety concerns. To review additional safety information, click here.

For additional questions, please contact the Medora Ranger District office or the McKenzie Ranger District office.