Oil production in the Powder River Basin, better known for its coal reserves, increased from 38,000 barrels per day in 2009 to 78,000 in the first quarter of 2014, and the EIA attributes the change to new drilling technology. “In the past, oil production came from the higher-permeability portions of Wyoming’s Turner, Parkman, Shannon, Sussex, and Frontier formations. With the application of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, larger portions of these formations have become profitable for commercial oil production.”
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