Apparently, the Bakken will not be denied. North Dakota's oil powerhouse got off to a slow start in 2013 as weather beat production back to about 766,000 barrels of oil per day.

Estimates of 1 million daily barrels may have seemed far-fetched at the time. But projections near the end of 2013 forecast that December might be the month to push the state past that magic number.

September set yet another record for production, with 931,940 barrels per day extracted in North Dakota, 93% of that from the Bakken and Three Forks, according to North Dakota officials.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) says the Bakken region now accounts for more than 10% of total US oil production and is expected to be the fourth region—along with the Gulf of Mexico, Eagle Ford and Permian—producing more than 1 million barrels of oil per day in December 2013.

The Eagle Ford and Bakken were projected to increase daily oil production by 118,000 barrels of oil per day from November to December 2013. “Infrastructure improvements in the central part of the nation carried more of this oil to refineries in recent months, helping to narrow the price difference between the Bakken region and West Texas Intermediate, which is priced at Cushing, Oklahoma,” the EIA said in a mid-November report.

The growth of crude oil production in the Bakken region is part of a longer-term trend in drilling efficiency gains and has led North Dakota to rank second in crude oil production in the US, behind only Texas. The state has benefited greatly from the oil boom. In 2001, North Dakota's GDP per capita ranked 38th out of 50 states. By 2012, its real GDP per capita was $55,250, more than 29% above the national average.

Crude oil take-away capacity is expected to be adequate as long as rail deliveries to coastal refineries keep growing, said Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources for the North Dakota Industrial Commission.

The rig count in the Williston Basin is stable, while the utilization rate for rigs capable of 20,000 feet or more remains about 90%, and for shallow well rigs drilling 7,000 feet or less, about 60%, he said.

Drilling permit activity rose in September and October as the winter approached.

“The goal is to have a sufficient permit inventory to accommodate multiwell pads through the end of load restrictions in 2014 as well as the time required to deal with federal hydraulic-fracturing rules if required,” Helms said.