North Dakota separates its oil, gas, and treating plant reporting into distinct monthly forms. Oil production gets its own: Form 5. If you operate any oil well in North Dakota, whether it is a Bakken horizontal in Mountrail County or a legacy vertical in Bottineau, you report monthly production on Form 5 to the North Dakota Industrial Commission’s Department of Mineral Resources.

Form 5 is the monthly oil production report filed through the NDIC’s NorthSTAR system (the portal that replaced the old legacy system in 2020). It covers produced oil, water, and the disposition of both. Gas gets reported separately on Form 5B. Treating plants get Form 5P. Most operators think of “Form 5” as the whole family of monthly NDIC reports, but technically it is the oil-specific one.

The deadlines are tight and NDIC staff are not known for flexibility. If you want to stay in good standing, the data has to arrive clean.

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What Goes on Form 5

Form 5 is filed monthly, by well, and it reports:

  • Oil produced (barrels) for each well that month
  • Water produced (barrels) for each well
  • Days produced and days shut-in
  • Disposition of oil: sold, stored, used on lease, lost
  • Purchaser for barrels that left the lease
  • Inventory at the beginning and end of the month

The NDIC also expects the data to reconcile with what the oil purchaser reports on their end. If the purchaser says they bought 2,300 barrels from your lease and you report 1,950, somebody is getting a question.

Form 5B (gas) and Form 5P (treating plant) have their own fields but share the same data chain and the same due date.

Who Files and When

All operators of record file monthly. Form 5 is due on or before the last day of the month following the production month. February production is due by the end of March. Filing is done through NorthSTAR, the NDIC’s electronic reporting portal at northstar.ndic.nd.gov.

North Dakota doesn’t have a stripper exemption on production reporting the way Oklahoma and Texas do. Every well, regardless of rate, reports monthly on Form 5. The tax side (the state’s 5% oil extraction tax and 5% gross production tax) is handled through the Office of State Tax Commissioner on separate filings, which also reconcile back to Form 5 data.

The Field Data That Feeds Form 5

The Form 5 line for any given well is built from the same five data points every month:

  1. Tank gauges from the pumper: beginning and ending inventory, with the math adjusted for temperature and BS&W.
  2. Run tickets from every transport pull, tied to the right well or lease.
  3. Water hauler tickets: North Dakota produces a lot of water, and the volumes matter for disposition reporting.
  4. Days produced: if a well was down for 8 days on a workover, that shows on Form 5 as 22 days produced, not 30.
  5. Purchaser statements: reconciled against your own run totals before you submit.

When any of those inputs are tracked on paper field tickets or in an Excel sheet, month-end becomes an archaeology project. NDIC does not penalize you for bad luck, but they do penalize you for late filings, and late filings are what you get when the data chain is broken.

How GreaseBook Supports the Form 5 Data Chain

GreaseBook captures the gauges, run tickets, water hauler tickets, and downtime notes in the field on a phone or tablet. The data rolls up on the operator side into a report that mirrors the Form 5 layout: well-by-well oil produced, water produced, days produced, purchaser, and inventory.

GreaseBook does not submit Form 5 for you. The NDIC wants operators of record in NorthSTAR, and that submission step stays with the operator or the filer. What GreaseBook does is turn the data-collection side of Form 5 from a three-week hunt into a one-afternoon rollup, so the filing happens on time with numbers that match the purchaser’s.

A Williston Basin operator running about 40 wells across three counties put it this way: “The data used to arrive at the accountant’s desk on the 12th. Now it is there on the 2nd, and the rest of the month is not wasted.”

Form 5 late filings come from broken data chains, not bad intentions.

GreaseBook gives North Dakota operators clean pumper data so month-end is a rollup, not a rescue.

See how GreaseBook works →

Common Form 5 Filing Mistakes

  • Days produced misreported. If a well was shut-in for a rod pump change or a stuck pump, those days count as down, not produced. Getting this wrong skews your per-day rates and can flag the well in NDIC’s data.
  • Water hauler volumes missing. Produced water gets hauled, and North Dakota tracks where it goes. Skipping water hauler tickets creates an inventory imbalance.
  • Purchaser mismatch. If you reconcile your gauges against the purchaser before submission, you catch the discrepancy and fix it. If you don’t, NDIC flags it.
  • Form 5 submitted, Form 5B skipped. Oil and gas are on separate forms. Filing one without the other is a common stripper-well operator error, especially on wells where casinghead gas is small.
  • Inventory math off by a few barrels. Starting inventory plus produced minus sold minus lease use should equal ending inventory. When it doesn’t, it is almost always a gauge error or a missed run ticket.

Wrong Fit for This Page

This page is not for Continental, Hess, Marathon, or the other majors running a full SCADA-to-accounting stack where Form 5 generates automatically out of a production accounting platform. If your data is already integrated end-to-end, you don’t need this. This page is for the independent with 5 to 100 wells in the Bakken or on the legacy side, running pumpers and chasing tickets.

FAQ

Does GreaseBook replace the NDIC Electronic Filing System?

No. NDIC EFS is where Form 5 and Form 5B get filed. GreaseBook is what captures the tank gauges, run tickets, and downtime data that has to be clean before the filing step. Different job.

When is North Dakota Form 5 due?

Form 5 is due on or before the last day of the month following production. March production is due by the end of April. File through NorthSTAR.

What is the difference between Form 5, Form 5B, and Form 5P?

Form 5 reports oil production. Form 5B reports gas production. Form 5P reports treating plant throughput. Most operators file 5 and 5B together. 5P is only for treating plant operators.

Do I file Form 5 through NorthSTAR or the old NDIC system?

Through NorthSTAR at northstar.ndic.nd.gov. The legacy system was retired when NorthSTAR went live in 2020.

Does Form 5 cover North Dakota’s oil extraction tax?

No. Form 5 is the production report. The oil extraction tax and gross production tax are filed separately through the Office of State Tax Commissioner, though those filings reconcile back to Form 5 production data.

About the author: Greg Archbald is the founder of GreaseBook. He built the product from inside the oil patch and has spent 15+ years on the operator side of oil and gas technology.

Form 5 and Form 5B due on the 25th? File from data that balanced three weeks ago.

GreaseBook puts the pumper's tank gauges, run tickets, and hauler tickets on your screen the day they happen, so North Dakota operators don't reconstruct the Bakken from memory. Because NDIC's late-filing penalties compound per form, per month.

See how GreaseBook works for Bakken operators →
**P.S.** Form 5 is one of the more forgiving state formats. The pain is almost always upstream: pumper capture, allocation, and tank reconciliation. If your Form 5 filing feels hard, look at those three first.