North Dakota

Summary: North Dakota is among the most fracked states in the nation with over 1,000 fracking jobs in 2023 alone. While the number of individual fracking jobs has decreased since 2011, the size of individual fracking jobs has increased dramatically.

On this page we provide summaries of data, links to resources and a collection of Open-FF articles focused on North Dakota. Click here for a different state or the Open-FF’s home page. At the bottom of this page is background on the Open-FF Project.

Quick Stats from FracFocus for 2023

  • Number of wells fracked: 1,073 in 8 counties
  • Typical water use: 9,640,000 gallons
  • Typical sand use: 10,100,000 pounds
  • Typical added chemicals: 63,300 pounds
  • Maximum added chemicals: 1,350,000 pounds
  • Number of trade secret claims: 6,105 with a total mass of 80,400,000 pounds
  • Most active operating companies: Continental Resources, Inc; Hess Corporation; Marathon Oil; Whiting Petroleum; and Grayson Mill Operating, LLC
Stats details
MedianMaxTotal all wells
Water Use (gallons)9,640,000103,000,00010,900,000,000
Sand Use (pounds)10,100,00023,200,00010,400,000,000
Chemical additives (pounds)63,3001,350,000166,000,000
Trade Secret records (pounds)51,000559,00080,400,000

Notes:
– These 2023 statistics are calculated from a Sept 12, 2024 download from FracFocus.
– Water use (in gallons) is disclosed as TotalBaseWaterVolume.
– Sand use is the quantity of the material, “Quartz (SiO2)” CASRN: 14808-60-7. Other proppants are sometimes used instead of this material.
– Chemical additives includes all records (except water and sand) that Open-FF has been able to resolve to an authoritative CASRN identity.
– Masses are calculated and/or directly disclosed for most chemicals. For these stats, when not enough information is available to provide a mass in a record, we set the value to zero.
– Trade Secrets (also known as Confidential Business Information or Proprietary) are those records that have been explicitly marked by the companies by one of those names. Even though the material’s identity is hidden, quantity data is usually still included.

To visit a county summary, either follow the links when you click on the map or click here for a county table.

North Dakota articles

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North Dakota: all years of FracFocus

Monthly number of disclosures
Typical water use
Recent water sources

Please note that an Open-FF analysis of FracFocus water source data in Dec. 2024 found several concerning sources of inconsistencies and errors.

Operating companies

Click Here for more about Operators in North Dakota.

Trade Secrets

Background

What is FracFocus? What is Open-FF?

FracFocus serves as the collector and manager of fracking chemical disclosures of the oil and gas industry. It delivers published disclosures to state regulators and it operates a website to help the public see those disclosures and offers a bulk download of the disclosure data. While it started in 2011 as an experiment, disclosing to FracFocus is now required by many states.

Illustration of functional relationship between FracFocus and Open-FF

Open-FF, which is the project associated with this web site, is independent of FracFocus, the industry and state regulators. Open-FF adds to the FracFocus data to correct errors and reduce ambiguity, calculate chemical quantities and provide perspective. Data, code and tools generated by Open-FF are open source and available to everyone. Development on Open-FF began in 2018. The FracTracker Alliance has sponsored Open-FF maintenance and development since 2023.

How Open-FF improves access to fracking chemical data

Cleaning, curating, and organizing the data to produce a value-added data set. This set includes the original FracFocus data along with features generated by Open-FF that calculate masses, flag errors, identify trade secret claims, link to hazard information and more. These data sets are currently updated monthly and we provide summaries of new disclosures.

Providing an online data browser that offers perspectives on specific chemicals, companies and locations without downloading or coding. For example, using this tool, users can quickly see (a) where a company is operating and its pattern of trade secret use, (b) how many times a specific chemical such as ethylene glycol has been used and its hazard profile and (c) what is the pattern of fracking within a given state.

Producing reports of data errors and omissions. These reports outline specific problems we have discovered such as massive misreporting of water use. We try to inform companies of the issues so that they can correct them. We are currently planning a series of error reports on issues such as sand-dominated disclosures, duplicated records, and inconsistent mass reports.

Resources

  • Open-FF Browser – Explore FracFocus data in depth by chemical, company or geography without downloading
  • FracTracker – Find a wealth of maps and other data about all wells in North Dakota, not just those in FracFocus.

cover art by Becky Mansfield (modified by author)