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Could oil production from the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana rival output from Saudi Arabia’s supergiant Ghawar oilfield, the greatest oil-bearing structure the world has ever known?

Until recently, comparisons between the shale fields of the Bakken and Ghawar, which produces 5 million barrels per day, would have been dismissed as fanciful.

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But Bakken’s exponential growth and enormous reserves put it on course to produce more than 1 million barrels per day by the middle of next year, which will earn it a place in the small pantheon of truly elite oil fields.

Ghawar accounts for nearly half of Saudi Arabia’s total declared capacity of 12.5 million barrels per day and has produced more than 65 billion barrels of oil since 1951.

Ghawar is one of only six super-giant oil fields that have produced more than 1 million barrels per day at their peak. Others are Burgan (Kuwait), Cantarell (Mexico), Daqing (China) and in the 1970s and 1980s Samotlor (Russia) and Kirkuk (Iraq).