While the Permian field has enjoyed a continued boom, with a rising rig count and an increase in investment activity, other U.S. onshore shale and tight oil fields haven’t been so lucky. Higher costs, declining investment and tougher competition have hit the Bakken field harder than the Permian. A slight recovery might be in progress, coming in the wake of OPEC production cuts and rising industry confidence, despite the on-going presence of bearish fundamentals and an evident supply glut. New pipelines could also lower Bakken costs and allow a faster recovery. But prospects for the region to compete with the surging Permian seem dim, at least in the short term. For the last few years, the news out of North Dakota wasn’t pretty. The Bakken, once the center of a regional energy boom, saw a major slump in activity. Since hitting a peak of 1.23 million bpd in December […]