This is What Keeps Me Excited About the Bakken: The Dinsdale 2-4

I posted this many months ago, but it's been buried, so I thought I would bring it back. This is a conventional well (vertical, not horizontal) in the Dickinson area, spudded in 1996, targeted the Lodgepole, and has produced more than 4.6 million barrels of oil as of last October, 2009.

Dinsdale 2-4 (Lodgepole, conventional well)

Permit/File Number: 14213
Producer: Trans Texas Gas
IP: 3,357 bbls/day
IP Test date: 12/30/1996
Cumulative oil: 4,634,619 (as of October 5, 2009)
Cum MCF Gas: 1,901,850 (316 boe)
Comment: this was a Lodgepole well; inside the city limits of Dickinson; a vertical well. This is a phenomenal story: 4 million barrels oil since spudding, and it continues to average 250 bbls/day. One just has to wonder how big that pool of oil is.

Note the file number, 14213; NDIC is now approaching 19000.

4 million barrels at $40/barrel = $160 million at the wellhead; at $20/barrel, it's still $80 million.

Re-Visiting EOG in the Parshall

Awhile back I posted a note about EOG's request for three horizontal wells in each of the following sections:

Sections 1 - 36 in 151N-90W (36 sections);
Sections 1 - 36 in 152N-90W (36 sections); 
Sections 1 - 6, 8 - 17, and 19 - 36 in 153N-90W (34 sections);
Sections 1 - 36 in 154N-90W (36 sections);
Sections 25 - 28, 31 - 36 in 155N-90W (10 sections);
Sections 1, 10 - 15, 23 - 26, and 36 in 151N-91W (12 sections);
Sections 1, 2, 11 - 15, 22 - 26, 35, 36 in 152N-91W (14 sections);
Sections 5 - 8, 17 - 20, 29 - 32 in 153N-89W (12 sections).

This is the entire Parshall oil field and maybe a few sections in adjoining fields. Three wells in each of these 190 sections would be a total of 570 wells, the highest density of wells in the Bakken. I haven't counted lately, but I figure that about three-quarters of all these sections (about 140) already have wells.

You can access the full 19 pages of the December 17, 2009, docket at https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/dockets/2009/docket121709.pdf.

When I first reported that, I had a different sight picture of what the configuration of these three laterals/section might look like.

Now that I've seen the recent Hess permits for six long laterals on one pad, my hunch is that the EOG horizontals will be laterals targeting three formations: Middle Bakken, the Upper TFS, and the Lower TFS. 

The only problem I have with this: most of these sections already have a lateral. Perhaps, the legalese suggests that the current well in each section counts as one, and EOG will be drilling an entirely new well with two laterals, one each in the Upper TFS and in the Lower TFS. That would only be 380 new wells, not 570.