Oil rigs

A new study released Tuesday morning shows the oil and gas industries in North Dakota had a direct economic impact of about $5 billion in 2009 – about four times larger than the impact in 2005 and a sign of just how much the oil business in western North Dakota has boomed in recent years.

Here’s part of an article from Herald staff writer Stephen J. Lee that also will be in Wednesday’s Herald:

The study, conducted by researchers at North Dakota State University in Fargo, put numbers to the furious growth seen in the state’s Oil Patch since the unconventional Bakken, then Three Forks/Sanish, formations, began to be tapped successfully by new techniques and technology. For the first time, petroleum is shown to have outstripped the state’s historically main industry, agriculture, which has a direct economic impact pegged at less than $3 billion per year.

The North Dakota Petroleum Council commissioned the study and released the results this morning. It’s the third such study the NPC has commissioned and the first since 2005, said President Ron Ness. The NDPC is a trade organization made up of nearly 200 companies involved in the industry.

The study says the direct economic impact in 2009 from the petroleum industry in the state was $4.9 billion, up from $1.29 billion in 2005.

If secondary, indirect impacts of the industry are figured in the total economic impact in 2009 was pegged at $12.7 billion, three times the $4.2 billion found in 2005, according to a news release from the NDPC this morning.