Update on Whiting's / Fidelity's South Heart - Three Forks Play (Bakken, ND, USA)

As exciting as the Bakken is in general, there are specific areas within the North Dakota Bakken that generate more interest than other areas. Of course, the following come to mind: the Sanish "owned" by Whiting; the Parshall "owned" by EOG; an area west of Williston "owned" by BEXP; parts of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation with a large KOG presence, and so on and so on.

It looks like we may be able to add another very exciting area: the South Heart area. See a previous post on this area. The South Heart prospect is an area where the Three Forks formation extends a bit farther southeast than the Bakken; wells in this area will target the Three Forks.

In the November, 2010, dockets, case number 13572, Whiting is requesting to pool all interests in forty-four 1280-acre spacing units between Belfield and South Heart, North Dakota. This is huge! Forty-four spacing units.

One of the last steps in the permitting process before drilling can begin is a request to pool all interests in a designated area. (For a nice discussion of "pooling," go to the FAQs tab, and search for "pooling.")

In the map below, the "X" is the city of South Heart.

More difficult to see, but at the far left of the map, center (top to bottom) is a white circle: that is Belfield. The area highlighted in "dark blue ink" are the 44 spacing units that Whiting wants to pool and begin drilling. One can assume there will be a minimum of two Three Forks wells in each of these spacing units.

The spacing units in yellow belong to Fidelity, a subsidiary of MDU. It looks like Fidelity/MDU has some very nice acreage.

Click on the map to enlarge it. Additional clicks will enlarge it to the size you want.