Thursday, February 21, 2019

For Newbies: A Rattlesnake Point Well -- February 21, 2019

This page will not be updated.

This page is for newbies.

We've discussed wells in Rattlesnake Point ad nauseum on the blog. I'm simply updating wells that caught my interest over the past six months or so.

The real purpose of this post: to remind newbies that it is absolutely impossible to predict how the Bakken or any given well in the Bakken will turn out.

When I first started blogging, I was told that I was cherry picking (I plead guilty as charged) and that many wells were uneconomical. And by implication, the Bakken would fail.

I argued that even these uneconomical wells played a role. Three important roles:
held the lease by production, no matter how low the production, as long as it kept producing
provided geologists with lots of information about the geology
provided operators an opportunity to improve their drilling/completion strategies
I never, never thought, at the time, about the halo effect, work-overs, mini-re-fracks, or major re-fracks.

But look at this well. In addition to the reasons already mentioned, look how this well "turned around."

The well:
  • 17089, 400, CLR, Bridger 44-14H, t4/08; cum 358K 12/18; and then back on confidential; re-fracked 4/17;
Full production profile at this post.

It's IP was pretty poor, even for the time:
  • 24-hour: 400 bbls
  • 30-day: 8,000 bbls
  • 90-day: 18,000 bbls
But it plateaued fairly quickly and, though low, was a steady Eddy when it came to production.

By seven years or so, it looked like a pretty miserable well. I did not check but very likely put on "stripper well" status.

Then, all of a sudden it shows a bit of life. In late 2015 the well shows a small jump in production, and it stayed there for about one year.

But then it was taken off-line for a year so.

And then it was re-fracked in early 2017:
  • 40 stages; 14.3 million lbs
  • "new IP": 1,344
  • it was a re-entry well
  • the re-entry was drilled in the existing horizontal lateral at the 20,845-foot point. 
  • TD was reached at 21,158' (the horizontal was extended by 313 feet)
  • "Lateral 1 was in the very upper part of the middle Bakken and in the Lower Bakken formation."
After the re-frack, this well turned out to be a very, very good well. I assume it will have work-overs, mini-re-fracks, and perhaps major refracks over the next 30 years. This well was first drilled in 2008 but really wasn't much of a good well until the re-frack, 2017. Technically, this well is ten years old, but from the "real" frack, it is only two years old. All infrastructure costs were sunk (road, pad, pipelines, etc) a long time ago. For the cost of extending the horizontal 300 feet and a big re-frack, CLR essentially got a brand-new well. In addition, the geologists and drillers learned more about the Bakken.  

Selected production profile:

BAKKEN11-20173016622169011990719639196390
BAKKEN10-20173122673219041694124616227151901
BAKKEN9-20172718302184651558919122161962926
BAKKEN8-20173127510274882742728501217386763
BAKKEN7-20175210220478371178851093
BAKKEN6-2017151923013063170317
BAKKEN5-20170000000
BAKKEN4-20170000000
BAKKEN3-20170000000
BAKKEN2-20170000000
BAKKEN1-20170000000
BAKKEN12-20160000000
BAKKEN11-20160000000
BAKKEN10-20160000000
BAKKEN9-20160000000
BAKKEN8-20160000000
BAKKEN7-201663356448743366367
BAKKEN6-2016302106222060225321592373

By the way, #31847, Bridger 9-14H1, exactly parallels this well, separated vertically, but hardly horizontally. #31847 is a Three Forks first bench well.   

2 comments:

  1. A fair number of those old wells were held by leases with a 1/8th royalty. It was only much later that 1/7th and 1/6th came into being. Our neighbor, smarter than the average bear, told the landman "I know you faster talkers. I'm holding out for 1/10th"! And so it goes...

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    Replies
    1. That's pretty funny. There are many similar examples of confusion among different industries. Ship captains in the old days took advantage of this confusion when hiring sailors -- described in detail in "Moby Dick."

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