North Dakota’s oil patch is turning out more than 120,000 barrels of crude per day for the first time in more than 20 years, state and industry officials say.

“It’s a big, important landmark,” said Lynn Helms, director of the state Industrial Commission’s mineral resources department.

North Dakota surpassed Kansas last year to become the eighth-largest oil-producing state in the nation, Helms said. It now ranks behind Wyoming, which produces 142,000 barrels of oil daily, he said.

“They are certainly our next target,” Helms said.

Preliminary May production figures, released this week, pegged the average daily production at 120,321 barrels, Helms said. The early estimates usually are lower than actual production, he said.

“The last time we had that many barrels a day was in November 1986,” Helms said.

North Dakota has 3,689 active oil wells, up 125 from the same time last year, Helms said.

“We are well into the second-highest period of oil production in history of the state,” said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council.

North Dakota produced 40 million barrels of oil last year, up 4.2 million barrels from 2005, Ness said. Production could hit about 45 million barrels this year.

The state’s oil production surpassed 100,000 barrels a day in late 2005, Ness said.

“We’ve added 20 percent production in just two years, and it just keeps growing,” he said. “That’s good.”

Sixteen of the state’s 53 counties currently are producing oil, Ness said.

Bowman, McKenzie, Billings, Williams and Bottineau counties lead the state in oil production, Ness said. Bowman County, in North Dakota’s southwest corner, accounts for about 40 percent of the state’s oil production, he said.

North Dakota sweet crude was fetching $67.65 on Tuesday, up from $65.95 a year ago, Helms said. Each barrel is 42 gallons.

Thirty-seven oil rigs were operating in North Dakota this week, down from an average of 41 in June, Helms said. Several rigs were being relocated this month, and Helms expects at least 44 rigs to be operating by the end of the year. Ness said the rig activity has been spurred by a yearlong tax cut for new wells in a formation known as the Middle Bakken, in western North Dakota.

North Dakota natural gas production also is at it’s highest level in nearly 20 years, Helms said. Natural gas production in May was pegged at 190 million cubic feet a day, the highest since last October, when the production averaged 197 million cubic feet a day.

Helms called last October’s production a “one-month blip” but said production currently is at levels not seen since 1988.

About 8 percent of natural gas produced by oil wells is being burned at the well head, since there is not enough capacity at natural gas processing plants in the state to capture it, Helms said.

Three natural gas processing plants in western North Dakota currently are being overhauled, and four more are slated to come on line over the next several months, Helms said. Once the processing plants come on line, all natural gas produced at well sites will be captured, he said.

Kathryn Strombeck, a state Tax Department analyst, said state oil tax revenue for the quarter ending in June totaled $50.1 million, up from $43.9 million for the same quarter a year ago.

It was the highest oil tax revenue collected for a single quarter “in recent history,” Strombeck said.