Bakken is not going anywhere. If anything, there is not enough infrastructure to keep up with production. The cold weather decrease means nothing in grand scheme of things..
They drill about 140 new wells per month. Each of those starts producing oil at about 1200 barrels per day.
But the MOST IMPORTANT parameter is not being advertised. That is that every single well they have drilled starts to decline its output as soon as it starts. There is talk of 30% decline rates/year. That means that 1200 bpd is down to 650 in just 2 years.
The reason that is the MOST IMPORTANT parameter is that there are 4000+ wells declining every single day and they add only 140 new ones per month. This is sprinting up a down escalator whose steps are moving downward at an increasing speed.
You can outdrill that acceleration . . . for a while. But it’s important to understand every such month that goes downward in production is several feet downward on the accelerating downward escalator that has to be made up by even faster sprinting.
This is not a good miracle to bet the nation’s life on.