Getting A Handle On The Size Of The Bakken

Acreage

Prudhoe Bay: Don reminded me, from wiki:

Prudhoe Bay Oil Field is a large oil field on Alaska's North Slope. It is the largest oil field in both the United States and in North America, covering 213,543 acres and originally containing approximately 25 billion barrels of oil. The amount of recoverable oil in the field is more than double that of the next largest field in the United States, the East Texas oil field. The field is operated by BP; partners are ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips Alaska.

North Slope, associated with Prudhoe Bay, not developed, everyone is talking about:

• 500,000 acres leased

The Bakken (most statistics are for North Dakota only)
Obviously, comparing acreage from one one field to another oil field is comparing apples and oranges, but Don pointed out an interesting statistic: Prudhoe Bay: 200,000 acres. In the Bakken (numbers rounded):

• KOG: 150,000 net acres
• NOG: 180,000 net acres
• Oasis: 335,000 net acres 
• Statoil: 360,000 net acres (ND; additional acreage in MT)
• COP: 600,000 net acres
• XOM: 615,000 net acres (DNR deal; XTO) -- Don's estimate
• Whiting: 700,000 net acres
• CLR: 1.1 million acres

Production

Prudhoe Bay, again:

• Cumulative North Slope oil peaked in 1989 at 2 million barrels per day. 
•  (Greater Prudhoe Bay: 1.5 million barrels per day, but had fallen to 943,000 barrels per day in 2005, while Greater Prudhoe averaged 411,000 barrels per day in December, 2006 and Prudhoe itself averaged 285,000 barrels per day. 
• Total production from 1977 through 2005 was 11 billion barrels. 
• As of August 2006, BP estimated that 2 billion barrels of recoverable oil remain and can be recovered with current technology.

The Bakken, North Dakota only:

• boom started ~ 2007
• production continues to rise; currently around 775,000 bopd
• most agree: will peak above 1 million bopd
• some suggest: will peak above 1.5 million bopd
• one source: will peak at 2.1 million bopd

Number of wells

Prudhoe Bay: about 1,000 (per wiki)
Bakken, North Dakota: >4,000 (estimate)

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Following the Rollefstad Presentation in Las Vegas in April, 2013, the next speaker, I am told increased the potential. A reader said:

Go to slide 42 of the Rolfstad presentation, it shows 18 wells on the pattern.

The next speaker said (From Bakken Services) that Tom’s presentation only touched on 4 layers of the Three Forks.  He indicated that layers 5 and 6 are being explored.

That would push it the high 20’S.    So 28 wells per spacing unit, 7,000 spacing units 196,000 wells.

32 wells per spacing unit, 7000 spacing units = 224,000 wells

The math is silly but moving up.