By Jessica Goad | Climate Progress
The Department of the Interior announced late last week that Secretary Sally Jewell will visit North Dakota this week to “highlight steps the Obama Administration is taking to create jobs, decrease our dependence on foreign oil, cut carbon pollution, and grow our economy as part of an all-of-the-above American-made energy strategy.”
New drilling technologies have recently unlocked significant oil resources in North Dakota and Jewell’s visit to this part of the country provides an important opportunity to take a closer look at the state’s oil boom.
Here are four things you need to know about the phenomenon that has given two tiny cities in western North Dakota the top slots as “America’s Biggest Boomtowns.”
1. North Dakota is evidence of the extraordinary amount of drilling occurring in the U.S. The state—the nation’s second-largest oil producer after Texas—continues to shatter monthly drilling records (seen in the chart below), most recently producing 800,000 barrels per day for the first time in history in May. And officials predict those numbers could very well increase throughout the summer.
