A Unique Litigation Landscape: A View of the Bakken’s Impact on North Dakota Courts

North Dakota has many fun facts. The State is home to the center of North America, which is located in Rugby, North Dakota. (Well, technically the “center” is about 16 miles southwest of Rugby, but it’s probably easier to create a tourist attraction in a town with existing businesses.) The official state beverage is milk. The State once experienced a 180 degree temperature swing in less than five months. It was a frigid -60° in Parshall in February 1936, yet less than five months later, on July 5, 1936, the temperature registered a sweltering 121° in Steele.

Perhaps the most talked about fun fact in recent months is that North Dakota leads crude oil production in our country, second only to Texas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in July 2014, North Dakota produced 34.4 million barrels of crude oil. Estimates are that The Bakken may contain as many as 24 billion barrels of oil, which at current barrel prices amounts to over $2.4 trillion of oil. By July of this year, North Dakota’s oil production was more than twice that of California’s and Alaska’s production combined.