Continental Resources 3Q11 Earnings -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Link here.

For now, I think I will let others provide analysis of the 3Q11 earnings for Continental Resources.

For me, this is most important data point:

The Company successfully completed the Charlotte 2-22H (91% WI) in McKenzie County, North Dakota, in October 2011, with the well producing 1,140 gross Boepd in its initial one-day test period. This is the Company’s first horizontal test of a deeper bench in the Three Forks formation.

“We’re very pleased with such a solid well in our first test of the lower benches of the Three Forks,” said Harold Hamm, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Continental is a pioneer in developing the Three Forks formation, initially targeting the first bench of the Three Forks approximately 20 feet below the Lower Bakken Shale in mid-2008. In 2011 Continental expanded its evaluation of the Three Forks by acquiring six cores of the entire vertical thickness of the formation over a distance of 115 miles north to south. The cores revealed that the Three Forks formation, which ranges from 180 feet to 270 feet thick under the Company’s acreage, contains up to four separate benches of dolomite that contain oil.

“The Charlotte 2-22H was drilled horizontally in the second bench, approximately 50 feet below a typical first-bench horizontal well,” Mr. Hamm said. “This successful test demonstrates that the Three Forks second bench has the potential to add incremental reserves to our estimated 24 billion Boe of technically recoverable oil and natural gas in the total Bakken.”

In case you missed that: CLR says that finding oil slightly deeper in the Three Forks has the potential to add incrementally to their estimate that the Bakken formation has 24 billion boe of technically recoverable oil and natural gas.