Shale Oil Production Expansion and Water-Energy Nexus in North Dakota: A Decentralized Agent-Based Modeling Approach
2017
Lim, Siew Hoon | Lin, Zhulu | Borders, Michael | Lin, Tong
The expansion of oil industry in the region has led to tremendous increases in the demand for water in western North Dakota where quality water is most scarce. Thus, striking a delicate balance between preserving water resources and expanding oil production at the Bakken is a challenging task. Using a decentralized agent-based model, we posit water depots as “agents” and examine the emergent behavior of water depots under three potential policy scenarios, and these scenarios are then compared to the baseline results to gauge the impacts on water consumption in the North Dakota oil patch. Our results show that restricting industrial use of the Missouri River and Lake Sakakawea waters would reduce a sizable amount of water consumption at the Bakken, but system violations would be prevalent and rendering null the restriction.
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