Keystone Energy Forum

Hunters and the oil industry can coexist. With the advent of the economic boom of the Bakken Shale, oil development will continue to expand in North Dakota. However, hunting and other outdoor recreational activities have a long tradition in North Dakota and will also continue.

The advent of horizontal drilling - also called directional drilling - has allowed developers to access reservoirs of oil and natural gas thousands of feet beneath the surface that could not be reached with vertical drilling. This technology, combined with hydraulic fracturing, has allowed developers to extract millions of barrels of oil from the Bakken Shale.