Monday, September 27, 2010

Am I Missing Something?

I think I do a pretty good job scouring news announcements regarding the Bakken. I know I miss a lot and I do make mistakes.

But in the process of re-looking at the September NDIC hearing docket, I noted the following:

  • 13334: CLR, 7 wells, 1280-acre, Dunn, 2 units; 14 wells total
  • 13335: CLR, 7 wells, 1280-acre, Dunn; 2 units; 14 wells total
  • 13336: CLR, 7 wells, 1280-acre, Dunn; 1 unit; 7 wells total
  • 13337: CLR, 7 wells, 1280-acre, Dunn; 4 units; 28 wells total
  • 13338: CLR, 7 wells, 1280-acre, Dunn; 8 units; 56 wells total
  • 13339: CLR, 7 wells, 1280-acre, Dunn; 9 units; 63 wells total
  • 13340: CLR, 7 wells, 1280-acre, Dunn; 5 units; 35 wells total 
  • 13341: CLR, 7 increase density wells, 1280-acre unit, Divide; 7 wells total
  • 13342: CLR, 7 increase density wells, 1280-acre unit, Divide; 7 wells total
  • 13343: CLR, 7 increase density wells, 1280-acre unit, Divide, Burke, Williams; 7 wells total 
In my original post, I had simply noted the case and the "7 wells, 1280-acre spacing" but did not look at the number of units involved. I went back to the dockets and updated that information, and the information above is what I noted.

That's 238 wells that CLR requested, and that's just a small part of the overall docket for September. Did I mis-read something; is that really accurate? Is that what the docket is saying? It just seems that with all the reporting that comes out of the Bakken, someone would have noted that, certainly by an analyst. But nothing.

So, let me know if I'm mis-reading this. This is absolutely incredible. It reminds me of the EOG request some months ago requesting in excess of 500 new wells in just a few cases.

[With a EUR of 700,000 barrels, at $50/bbl this works out to $8.3 billion over the lifetime of these 238 wells. CLR's market cap is $7.63 billion today.]

[I thought seven (7) wells on one spacing unit was a lot, now I see up to nine (9) wells on one spacing unit in the October dockets. More to follow.]

4 comments:

  1. your doing an excellent job,,,, thank you

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  2. this is just a small piece of clr bakken .will they run out of cash ?

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  3. Nope. It's not as if they are going to drill these wells all at once. Itis true that CLR is raising money to expedite their drilling program, and yes, it takes money to hold these leases but that's part of the oil business.

    And if worse comes to worse, these are all assets. Hess valued AEZ at about $5,000/acre and ERF valued their recent purchase at about $10,000/acre in the Bakken.

    Unless geopolitical changes affect the US industry negatively, I would not be worried about cash position for CLR.

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  4. By the way, in the "old" days, one could count on a significant number of "dry" wells. With occasional exceptions, there are no "dry" wells in the Bakken. There are some "uneconomic" wells, and some wells marginally economic, but ongoing cash flow from producing wells will help finance a lot of this. Also, the companies are only asking for permits to drill; once they get the permits, they will re-evaluate and prioritize. For me, these data points only help put some kind of value on these companies; helps put things in perspective.

    Remember, in 2006, scientific papers were still being written about the potential of the Bakken. It's an evolving situation, and we are still very, very early in the Bakken, again, assuming geopolitics does not kill the US oil industry stateside.

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