Monday, March 7, 2016

Some Fun With The Madison North-Northeast Of Minot -- March 7, 2016.

Disclaimer: in a long note like this there will be typographical and factual errors. I may be coming to or leading myself to conclusions that are completely wrong. I may be seeing things that don't exist. I am inappropriately exuberant about the Williston Basin. Do not make any financial, investing, or travel decisions based on what you read here. If this information is important to you, go to the source. This has not been triple-checked. There may be simple typographical errors that need to be fixed. Sometimes simple typographical errors result in huge errors.
Now to the post

Take a look at this stand-alone post first regarding the new Chatfield Madison wells.

While you're doing that, here's some background music, assuming your mobile device can multi-task:

Sweet Jane, Lou Reed
 
Also, scroll through some Madison wells at the "monster well" site.

With that background, I'm going to take a look at the early production of some of these "monster Madison" wells. When I did the first run, everything was done, of course, randomly. What I post below might have some cherry-picking (to make a point) but not much.

The Madison well and early production:
  • Drilled back in 1953, #165, 645/PNA, Hess, Beaver Lodge-Madison Unit G-11, Beaver Lodge; t6/53; cum 1.02 million bbls;
MADISON11-19539202800000
MADISON10-19537142500000
MADISON9-19538182000000
MADISON8-195317452800000
MADISON7-19539131405000
MADISON6-1953202993015000
  • Drilled back in 1953, #345, 504/PNA, Hess, Tioga-Madison Unit L-144, Tioga, t8/53; cum 2.1 million bbls:
MADISON1-1954816440332000
MADISON12-1953716250234000
MADISON11-1953817310303000
MADISON10-19531123710418000
MADISON9-19538173500000
MADISON8-19538154800000
  • Drilled back in 1958, #1824, 328/PA, Hess, Blue Buttes-Madison Unit L-306, t6/58; cum 1.01 million bbls 2/05:
MADISON10-19588592025000
MADISON9-1958671707000
MADISON8-1958131848019000
MADISON7-195815197400000
MADISON6-19585925019000
MADISON5-19580000000
  • Drilled back in 1958, #1918, 187/PA, Hess, Blue Buttes-Madison Unit M-405, Madison, Blue Buttes, s7/58; t8/58; PNA 8/09; 1.28 million bbls:
MADISON12-195813145401354000
MADISON11-195812100701136000
MADISON10-1958105890691000
MADISON9-1958784201434000
MADISON8-1958774801275000
MADISON9-19560000000

Okay, we'll quit there. There was no cherry-picking. I simply took the first four Madison wells with more than a million bo cumulative and then posted the first six months of production. In almost all cases, in general, subsequent production does not exceed initial production unless they go back in and "re-do" the well in some way.

There are exceptions. Look at the production profile in this well, in the first few years. The sundry forms in the well file are not helpful; there is no explanation why this well's production surged some months:
  • Drilled back in 1977, #6165, 772, Petro-Hunt, Klatt 2-19-3D, Madison, Little Knife, t7/77; cum 1.50 million bbls 10/15:
MADISON2-197916526652960624600
MADISON1-1979281253612752141948700
MADISON12-1978291094100951400
MADISON11-197826142020710868108680
MADISON10-19783013351011250500
MADISON9-1978289276011131600
MADISON8-1978301097800935500
MADISON7-1978316253026597200
MADISON6-1978302794030217800
MADISON5-1978292831031219502126
MADISON4-197872800030218100
MADISON3-1978103728031289500
MADISON2-197894980011384903658
MADISON1-197894709031364503576
MADISON12-1977105973031464304613
MADISON11-197795803030454704520
MADISON10-1977126225063484604810
MADISON9-1977281775403013837013743
MADISON8-19772812116062949609412
MADISON7-197729384800296300
MADISON6-19770000256802550

Now go back and look at the production profiles of the three new Chatfield Madison wells (the link again).

There are two points to make:
1. Those three new Chatfield Madison wells are producing at 5,000 bbls/month compared with less than 1,000 bbls/month for what became "monster wells" decades later, but there is a gotcha!

2. Even wells that produced 3,000 or 5,000 bbls/month early on could surprise us and go on and produced upwards of 15,000 bbls/month many months or years later. 
Remember, these Madison wells are a) shallow; and, b) not fracked. Shallow? Note that the new Chatfield Madison well reached TD in less than 5 days; 4,667 feet.

There was a third point I was going to make, but now I forgot it. Give me a minute.

Oh, yes, that was the third point: Madison wells are a) shallow; and, b) not fracked. 

Oh, yes, the gotcha: notice the number of days those early Madison wells were producing -- less than 10 days per month. The production for the new Chatfield Madison wells is for a full 30-day month.

Of course, I don't have an explanation for why those early Madison wells were on line for so few days when they were just starting out but the interesting thing is that when they went to a full 30 days production was not necessarily much better (at least in the half dozen or so wells I looked at). Could it have been due to takeaway capacity back in the 1950's? Was it due to regional refinery capacity? Too many things to think about. So many story lines.

But now that I've seen the early production numbers of these new Chatfield Madison wells and compare them to "monster Madison wells" it makes me think these may be monster wells some day in the future.

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