How Exciting Is the Bakken? How About 75,000 Wells in the North Dakota/Montana Bakken?

I will complete this entry later, but for now you all may enjoy this CLR presentation dated August 8, 2011.

Every slide is great, but notice slide 7: 14,700 square miles of continuous oil accumulation. A square mile is a section, 640 acres. Denbury Onshore has requested permission to put 7 wells on 640-acre spacing units. QEP has permits for 10 wells on one pad (?) with 3,860-acre spacing. Doing the math, one could easily get to >75,000 wells in the North Dakota Bakken (straddling North Dakota/Montana: don't confuse this with the Alberta Bakken in central Montana). Most of those 75,000 wells would be in North Dakota. Some folks can do the math and come up with 88,000 wells.

It should be noted that Lynn Helms has suggested as many as 50,000 wells will be needed to drill out the Bakken. The infrastructure in North Dakota can manage about 2,000 wells/year.

Note slide 9, the pay zones or formations: Middle Bakken, Upper Three Forks (1st Bench), and now the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th benches of the Three Forks.

And if you aren't impressed yet, look at slide 10: Harold Hamm highlights the results of five Eco-Pads, where the average IP of each of the four wells on each pad reported the following: 940; 1,377; 1,088; 745; and, 1,948. The Carson Peak/Morris Eco-Pad that average 1,948 bbls (IP) is located in the Oakdale oil field, a very, very active field.