Hoeven: Crack the Code 2.0, Bringing Coal & Oil Together to Double Both Recovery Rate in Bakken, Life of Coal-Fired Power Plants

GRAND FORKS, N.D. – Senator John Hoeven today hosted U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright at the University of North Dakota (UND) Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) for a discussion on efforts to crack the code in the Bakken again through enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Hoeven and Wright held a roundtable with North Dakota’s energy producers, as well as Representative Julie Fedorchak, Governor Kelly Armstrong and other state, local and university leaders, on policies secured in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OB3) that align incentives to encourage partnerships between coal and oil producers to:
In order to advance these goals, Hoeven worked to ensure the OB3 properly aligned the 45Q tax credit to incentivize the use of CO2 for EOR, making it the clear, commercially-viable choice to improve oil recovery in the Bakken, while establishing an additional revenue stream for coal producers. Hoeven stressed that:
“In North Dakota, we originally cracked the code in the Bakken by advancing a legal, tax and regulatory environment that enabled the deployment of the latest greatest technologies to access previously unavailable oil reserves. This empowered innovative companies to come into the state and develop oil and gas from shale formations on a commercially-viable basis. For example, through his former company, Liberty Energy, Secretary Wright played a key role in making North Dakota an energy powerhouse by bringing new hydraulic fracturing technologies to market,” said Hoeven. “Now we have him in the state once again in his new role as Secretary of Energy as we crack the code on the Bakken for the second time, bringing together our oil and coal industries to not only double our recovery rate in the Bakken, but also double the life of our coal plants. That means more affordable energy and a more reliable grid, which is a recipe for true U.S. energy dominance.”
In addition, the OB3 takes other important steps to advance U.S. energy dominance in North Dakota and across the nation. These include:

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