Between its coal, its wind and its oil, North Dakota produces far more energy than it consumes, and the surplus flows out across the region on wire, pipe and rail.
For all its wide, thinly settled country, North Dakota is one of the nation's great energy exporters. Its lignite plants, its wind farms, its oil wells and its gas plants together produce far more power and fuel than the state's own households and industries could ever use, and the surplus streams outward to light and warm a much larger region.
More Than the Plains Can Burn
The electricity leaves on high-tension lines that march across the prairie toward the cities of the Upper Midwest. The oil rides pipe and rail to distant refineries; the gas feeds pipelines that reach a continent's markets. In energy terms, the plains give far more than they take.
From the almanac's reckoning:
- North Dakota produces far more energy than it consumes.
- High-tension lines carry surplus electricity to the Upper Midwest.
- Oil and gas leave the state by pipeline and rail to distant markets.
It is a role the state has grown into over a century, from the first mine-mouth power plant to the newest turbine, and it ties the quiet countryside to the humming grid of a nation. The almanac reckons the plains among the true powerhouses of the country, exporting the light by which others live.
Elsewhere in the Almanac
The Roughneck's Trade on the Bakken Rig
On drilling floors across the west, the roughnecks work the pipe in long shifts through heat and cold, in one of the hardest and best-paid trades the plains have to offer.
Carbon Capture Comes to the Lignite Country
Hoping to square coal with a lower-carbon future, engineers on the Missouri Slope are pursuing projects to capture carbon dioxide and lock it deep beneath the plains.
Produced Water: The Oil Patch's Other Flood
For every barrel of Bakken oil comes salty water from deep in the earth, and managing that brine has become one of the oil patch's quietest and costliest challenges.