The Lodgepole Formation and Oil for America

Locator: Lodgepole10001.

 

NEWS / UPDATES

 March 10, 2024: from a reader today, with some editing: 

Lone Wolf Consulting (Dalton Halgren) was the "Engineer" in this operation.  He had people convinced that he was (a) petroleum engineer who was also working with Halliburton when they were trying to plug (the) Deep Water Horizon blowout, part of the Maconda play off the coast of Louisiana.  Eventually, years down the road, it came to light that he was NOT an engineer.

Long story short, there was another company in NE Montana who pursued these Lodgepole Walsortian mounds in a much more systematic method, and they determined that these plays are very much wild cats, hit or miss, with no good predictors.

The original Flathead Beacon story archived.

June 22, 2011: another "Oil for America" well comes off the confidential list, but remains in DRL status. 

• 20195, DRL, Oil for American, Dohrman 14-1, Wildcat, Lodgepole

June 2, 2011: On the docket for June, NDIC:

• 14541: Oil for America, temporary spacing for Zastoupil 22-1, Stark; according to NDIC "Well Search" page, the status of this well is "IA" -- inactive or shut-in

June 2, 2011: Another Oil for America well comes off the confidential list, but no data except total depth:

• 20061, TD = 9,615 feet, Oil for America, Dohrmann 13-1, Stark

May 6, 2011: Another Oil for America well comes off the confidential list, but no data; now on DRL status.

• 19785, DRL, Oil for America, Froelich 27-2, Wilcat, Lodgepole

April 7, 2011: A fourth Oil for America well comes off the confidential list.

• 19601, DRL, Oil for America, Wieglenda 23-1, Wildcat, Lodgepole (this is one of five Lodgepole wells in southwest ND with significant personal interest); spudded 10/10
• The first Oil for America well that reported, the Zastoupil well had an IP of 75

March 21, 2011:  Finally, after coming off the confidential list a month ago, Oil for America is reporting production for:

• 19258, Producing?, Oil for America, Zastoupil 22-1, Wildcat, Lodgepole; produced 75 bbls of oil on one day in March, 2011

March 7, 2011: Updates on the Zastoupil and the Wolf wells but still no production data.

December 10, 2010: Rumor has it that the first two wells were successful. When you get to the link, ignore all the chatter -- go directly to the December 10, 2010, entry.

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For those who have read the following "Original Posting" below, you may be interested in reading more about the Lodgepole from someone much more knowledgeable, much more credible than me. These are incredibly good links:


http://bakkenshale.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-in-world-has-anschutz-found.html
http://bakkenshale.blogspot.com/2009/06/marathon-opens-lower-lodgepole-third.html
http://bakkenshale.blogspot.com/2008/01/its-faults-fault.html
http://bakkenshale.blogspot.com/2007/07/eog-keeps-filling-tanks-parshall-field.html

ORIGINAL POST

In an effort to understand why Oil for America is drilling their wildcats where they are and in an effort to connect various other dots, it is amazing what one finds.

Other dots include Whiting's interest in its Lewis and Clark Prospect, in addition to the Three Forks formation, if any (see below).

First, it probably helps to have a glass of Scotch (which I don't have) and then a some great music (which I do have), and then start searching.

Goodnight Moon, Shivaree, as popularized in Kill Bill 2, Quentin Tarantino
First, who / what is "Oil for America"? Tres amigos.

Robert J. Angerer
Officer since February 2003

Mr. Angerer, age 62, is a partner in Oil For America, an oil exploration business formed in 2002, with operations primarily in North Dakota and Montana. Mr Angerer is also Chairman of the Board for both the Company and Coastal, Coastal Caribbean Oils & Minerals, Ltd. Also, this site, when you get there, scroll down to the 24th comment (I'm not joking).

Jamil Azad, geologist. Consulting geologist to a number of firms over the years.

Engineer.

The Lodgepole Connection

Back in the November 9, 2009, issue, there was an article in the Oil and Gas Journal featuring Robert Angerer which discusses the Lodgepole in depth. If that link is broken, I have another link at my original posting on the Lodgepole. [Actually, it goes back even further: here is a link in OGJ talking about Oil for America and the Lodgepole.

NDIC Hearing Dockets

December, 2010

13791: Whiting, to establish 8 1280-acre units in Golden Valley County; to target the Lodgepole formation

November, 2010
13549: Hess, request to drill a Lodgepole well in Williams County
September, 2010
13244: Halek, requesting a 320-acre spacing unit for Dickinson-Lodgepole Pool

Lodgepole Data Points (according to the Jamil Azad - Robert Angerer article linked above)

• Referred to as the "Dickinson Supergiant"
• The Lodgepole is conservatively estimated to be under 25,000 acres of surface land, almost all in North Dakota, centered in the Williston Basin
• EURs for each well: 800,000 bbls, if dry holes included; 1.4 million bbls, if dry holes excluded
• The Bakken shale did not source the Dickinson field, but the Lodgepole formation did
• Organic content of the Lodgepole formation: an astounding 13 percent
• A Lodgepole reef was accidentally tapped in 1993, and then pretty much forgotten
• The Lodgepole is a unique formation; the pools of oil are in mounds, as "thick" as 330 feet
• Not amenable to seismography (explains why there may have been as many as 130 dry holes around the Dickinson area following initial discovery)
• Non-seismic technology necessary -- see paper for description

The Theory: Working Through the Process (According to the article linked above)

• Every producing well hit a reef; every well that did not hit a reef was dry
• Oil companies success in hitting oil dwindled between 1993 and 1998
• The author says that "seismic is not the answer"
• The author introduces new technology to locate these reefs
• Technology built on experience gained in Texas
• Focused on "Waulsortian mound," the Lodgepole reefs

A1 Analysis

• A1 photo-geo-morphological analysis
• Theory: the weight of overlying strata compacts the off-reef sediments more than the reef core
• Erosion removes surrounding sediment, resulting in a mound (reef)
• This technology is not new; evolution of aerial photogeomorphology
• AI "constitutes a formidable advance in reef location, but two more technologies are required to optimally locate the reefs

AII Analysis (I have trouble following this; proceed at our own risk)

• The mounds then collapse under their own weight/dissolution of limestone into the karst, causing a chimney (karst: a geologic term: A type of land formation, usually with many caves formed through the dissolving of limestone by underground drainage)
• Collapse chimneys -- due to collapse -- obviously result in increased natural fracturing

Drilling Experience

"Although the stratigraphic correlations between dry holes worked perfectly in Dickinson, corelation  between dry holes (drilled outside collapse chimneys) and producers (drilled inside collapse chimneys) or between producers drilled in different collapse chimneys are chaotic and invlaidate predictions based on formation."

The Mounds and Their Collapse Chimneys are the Outlets of the Real Reservoir

"The new reservoir model of the Dickinson oil field has fractures surrounding a collapse chimney that drain the encasing rocks -- such as the Madison carbonates. This explains how the puny Waulsortian mounds with a 3 - 5% porosity, negligible nonfracture permeability, and holding a maximum of, say, 120,000 bbl of producible oil, in fact may yield more than 4 million bbl of oil.

Fracturing Not Necessary if Theory Holds

"Unlike the Bakken shale play in the Williston Basin that requires hydraulic fracturing, the collapse of the Lodgepole mounds created a natural vertical fracturing across the entire are that can effectively drain the Madison carbonates if wells are placed within the collapses.

Where to Drill In Relationship to the Mound

One needs to look at Figure 10 in the paper to see that the place for the wellbore is right at the base of the mound (not into the mound, but not more than 50 feet from the mound, based on what I see in the figure.

Part 2: Williston Waulsortian Mounds -- Dickinson Field -- Lodgepole Reefs, November 16, 2009
Chimneys Not Created Equally: A III Analysis

• Experience revealed that not all chimneys were equally productive
• The question was how to find the most productive chimneys
• This resulted in a new (patented) process, which the author refers to as A III Analysis
• A III Analysis based on hydrocarbon analysis of microseepages at ground level (not seismic)

Results

• Analysis results in finding "best" chimneys
• The well must be within 400 feet of the mound/chimney (I was wrong above)
• "Only a tiny area of the potential 25,000 square miles of the Dickinson oil field has so far yielded production; this restricts reserve estimates to the category of wild guesses."
• "The simplest of these anchors on Eland oil field, said to cover 5.25 square miles and has an EUR of 32 million bbl, which give a recovery of about 6 million bbl/square mile. [A section is one squre mile. Remember, a single well in a section in the core Bakken has a EUR of 700,000 to 900,0000 bbls.]

Bottom line:

"Prorating this figure to the area of the Dickinson supergiant oil field yields a most satisfying -- if highly aleatory -- 150 billion bbl potential and puts it in the category of Alberta's Athabasca tar sands. Dividing this figure by 10 still yields a giant field."

Ta-da. By the way, aleatory means random, by chance. A new word for me.

So, you are asking, as I am, where is the Eland oil field and where is it in relation to activity of Oil for America and Whiting?

The Eland oil field is a very small field, about eight (8) sections total on the southwest side of the city of Dickinson. The center of the Eland oil field is six miles east of South Heart, the center of a significant amount of recent interest. South Heart is, in turn, 10 miles east of Belfield, where Whiting is putting in a new shop / industrial park.

My hunch:

• Oil for America is using their patented methods to go after the Lodgepole
• Whiting is taking advantage of the Three Forks extension / pinch out in the Belfield-South Heart-Dickinson area to exploit the Three Forks formation (Lewis and Clark prospect), but is watching Oil for America closely, and has, in fact, applied for permits for eight 1280-acre units in Golden Valley County to target the Lodgepole

Where Are the Oil for America Wells? They have six, all wildcats:

• 19785, Froelich 27-2; 27-138-97, rig-on-site;12 miles southwest of center of Dickinson
• 19601, Wieglenda 23-1; 23-139-94; 15 miles east-southeast of center of Dickinson
• 19272, Wolf 29-1; 29-139-95; six miles southeast of center of Dickinson
• 19258, Zastoupil 22-1; 22-139-97; six miles SW of ctr of Dickinson, just outside Eland field
• 20061, Dohrmann 13-1; 13-140-94; 15 miles east-northeast of Dickinson
• 20195, Dohrmann 14-1; 14-140-94; 15 miles east-northeast of Dickinson

History:
When I first heard of the current story, it was the first time I had heard of "Oil for America." I thought it was a new company. It turns out it has been around at least since the beginning of this boom. See this link. This was written back in March, 2004:

Rocky Ridge Petrosearch L.L.C., a wholly owned subsidiary of Petrosearch Corporation, is planning exploratory drilling of Lodgepole reefs on nearly 45,000 acres recently acquired in the Williston basin near Dickinson, North Dakota, under a farm-out agreement with Oil For America (OFA). OFA's proprietary exploration technology indicates the acreage--in northeastern Slope County and southwestern Stark County-could contain as many as 50 new Lodgepole reef exploratory targets, extending Petrosearch's Lodgepole play into a new area.

Note: permit 19705, Wanner 44-23H, Fidelity. This Fidelity wildcat is located in T139-95 (section 23), the same township as Wolf 29-1.  If you check out this township at the NDIC website you will find that there have been fourteen (14) wells drilled in this township over the years. All of them have been dry (except possibly one, which is no longer producing, in any event). One was drilled by TransTexas which hit a gusher in the Lodgepole some time ago. Most of these dry wells were drilled between 1996 and 1998, following the accidental "discovery" of the first great Lodgepole well in 1993.

Note: another comment here, November 26, 2010. 

Note: my interest in the Lodgepole was reignited when I saw on the December, 2010, NDIC hearing dockets that Whiting was asking for eight (8) 1280-acre spacing units in Golden Valley County to target the Lodgepole.


Another source: Oil and Gas Journal, November 16, 2009.