Shale Oil Production Expansion and Water-Energy Nexus in North Dakota: A Decentralized Agent-Based Modeling Approach

Siew Hoon Lim, Zhulu Lin, Michael Borders and Tong Lin

No 235979, 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Resource/Energy; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp, nep-ene and nep-env
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea16:235979

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.235979

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