North Dakota Century Code Title 38. Mining and Gas and Oil Production § 38-25-01. Definitions

1. “Commission” mean the industrial commission.

2. “Gas” includes all natural gas, including hydrogen, and all other fluid hydrocarbons not defined as oil.

3. “Geological storage” means the underground storage of oil or gas in a storage reservoir or salt cavern.

4. “Oil” includes crude petroleum oil and other hydrocarbons regardless of gravity which are produced at the wellhead in liquid form and the liquid hydrocarbons known as distillate or condensate recovered or extracted from gas, other than gas produced in association with oil and commonly known as casinghead gas.

5. “Permit” means a permit issued by the commission allowing a person to operate an underground storage facility.

6. “Pore space” has the same meaning as in section 47-31-02.

7. “Prevent waste” means the locating, spacing, drilling, equipping, operating, or producing of any oil or gas storage well or facility in a manner that increases the quantity of oil or gas stored, or which decreases unnecessary loss or destruction of oil or gas.

8. “Reservoir” means a subsurface sedimentary stratum, formation, aquifer, or void, whether natural or artificially created, including oil and gas reservoirs and saline formations suitable for or capable of being made suitable for injecting, storing, and withdrawing oil or gas. The term does not include salt caverns.

9. “Salt cavern” means a natural occurring cavity contained within a salt formation or a cavity created in a salt formation by solution mining, suitable for injecting, storing, and withdrawing oil or gas.

10. “Solution mining” means the process of injecting fluid into a well to dissolve rock salt or other readily soluble rock to create a salt cavern for underground storage of oil or gas.

11. “Storage facility” means the reservoir, salt cavern, underground equipment, and surface facilities and equipment used or proposed to be used in an underground storage operation. The term does not include a pipeline used to transport oil or gas to the storage facility.

12. “Storage operator” means a person holding or applying for a permit.

13. “Waste” means the inefficient storing of oil or gas.