Bakken 101 For Newbies -- February 26, 2019

Some nice links with regard to a CLR well that came off the confidential list today:

• 34546, 1,475, CLR, Pasadena 6-11H1, Banks, 4 sections, 57 stages, 6 million lbs, t11/18; cum 48K 12/18; note the small amount of proppant used; the Pasadena wells are tracked here; fracking strategies are tracked here;

For newbies, a lot gets packed into that short nugget.

34546: permit number. The Bakken boom began when permits were in the 16XXX series. So, 16,000 permits later.

1,475: bbls/day -- calculated for a 24-hour period; various ways of calculating that number. After years of doing this one gets a "feeling" for these IPs which vary from operator to operator, field to field, but 1,475 is a pretty good number for CLR. As a side note: BR is the outlier -- it consistently reports very, very low IPs (two-digit IPs are common) but then reports very, very good wells.

CLR: Continental Resources. Publicly traded company. Its ticker symbol.

Pasadena 6-11H1: legal name. Generally all wells in the same drilling unit have the same "leading name," in this case, Pasadena. Every operator has a different way of naming their wells. We discussed that a long, long time ago. In this case, the "6' is the chronologic number for this well, #6 in the Pasadena series of wells for CLR. Right now, CLR is up to #9 among Pasadena wells. The "11" is the section in which this well is sited. The legal name, in this case, does not tell us which units are in the drilling unit; the file report says it is 2560-acre unit or four sections. H1: a few months ago, I started putting in bold wells that target the Three Forks. Different companies designate middle Bakken wells and Three Forks wells differently. CLR uses a simple "H" for a middle Bakken well; "H1" for Three Forks first bench; "H2" for Three Forks second bench.

4 sections: size of the drilling unit.

57 stages, 6 million lbs: the frack ("completion") strategy. There has been a huge jump in the number of stages and the amount of proppant used to frack "shale" wells. Fracking strategies are tracked here. There is some suggestion that slightly less proppant is needed for Three Forks wells vs middle Bakken wells. I don't follow it closely enough to say, but it's my understanding that operators use appreciably more proppant in the Permian.

t11/18: the date the operator "tested" production from the well, generally done shortly after the well has been fracked ("completed").

cum 48K 12/18: cumulative production; the paperwork lags what is going on in the field by two months. This data is as of December, 2018, and this is being posted near the end of February, 2019. I round the production number. There is generally little production for the first couple of months after a well is fracked (for operational reasons). One really needs to see the production profile to get a feeling for what is going on.

And then the comments.