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.

Whiting Proposes a Natural Gas Processng Plant Near Belfied (Bakken, ND, US)

A couple days ago I posted a long note regarding a flurry of activity by Whiting in the Belfield area.

Today there was an article in the Dickinson Press regarding some of that flurry of activity: Whiting is requesting permission to have agricultural land near Belfield be rezoned as industrial land for the purposes of a natural gas gathering and processing plant.

NDIC November Hearing Dockets Posted

I've posted a summary of the November NDIC hearing dockets.

In one sense this has been one of the more mundane dockets I've seen in the past year.  It was composed mostly of pooling requests, and multiple wells in 1280-acre spacing units, but all in all, not many wells.

Having said that, there are many, very interesting cases. A couple come to mind, the request by Whiting to pool forty-four 1280-acre spacing units near South Heart. One can assume that there will be a minimum of two wells on each of these spacing units (88 wells) as a start, and eventually, based on what is going on in the Sanish, as many as six wells in each of those units. Incredible. And these are going to be Three Forks wells.

Another one is CLR's request to put up to seven more wells in the very small Hebron field northwest of Williston.  The Hebron field is one of the smallest fields in the Williston Basin, and already has six to eight wells. Now, CLR wants to put those seven wells into a single 960-acre spacing unit. I find that incredible, this early in the development of the Bakken.

Most interesting are all the risk penalty legal cases: the lawyers have arrived for whatever reason. Not unexpected.

Remember the Birdbear Formation: Today MRO Reports 39 BOPD From a Birdbear Well (ND, USA)

Remember the Birdbear formation?

Sometime ago the Birdbear formation was getting a bit of press. Today, the only Birdbear well I recall, Marathon's Mylo Wolding 14-11, reported an IP of 39 bopd.

On the daily activity report, the well is reported as producing from the Bakken pool, but the well was advertised as a Birdbear well, at least when I originally recorded the data. It does not have the typical "H" designation suggesting it was not fracked. The very low IP is not consistent with a typical Bakken well. The Birdbear is immediately below the Three Forks which, in turn, is immediately below the Bakken formations (upper, middle and lower).

Updates

Update, November 3, 2010: see first comment below. Apparently this was a vertical test well that finishes in the  Birdbear. Their intention is to test from Lodgepole to Three Forks and possibly produce and test for 90 days up to 3 layers depending on the data they receive from their tests. The article also mentions that they have another well like this elsewhere. For newbies: by law, all core data or the core itself (I forget which) must be sent to the state for archiving and study.

Nineteen (19) New Permits in Bakken, ND, USA Including a Six-Well Multi-Pad

Folks: I have been tracking and transcribing daily activity reports to my databases since 2006. There has been a significant increase in the number of permits being issued. In the old days (last year), a day with six new permits was exciting. Recently, North Dakota has been granting double digit number of permits, usually between eleven and fifteen. I think fifteen was the previous maximum in one day in this boom (at least recently). Today, November 2, 2010, North Dakota granted nineteen permits. This is huge, absolutely huge. If anything thought the boom in the Bakken was leveling off appears to be mistaken.

At $5.25 million/well, these 19 wells, when drilled, represent $100 million. I would assume much of the cost is in personnel (direct, indirect, pad preparation, oil service companies) and material (sand, water, proppants) and much of this stays inside the state's economy. This is before the state starts collecting royalties. In a single day, the state of North Dakota authorized more than $100 million worth of new wells.

Operators: Hess (6), Encore (3), Helis (2), Samson (2), EOG, Whiting, BR, Zavanna, Zenergy, and CLR.

Fields: Ross, Sand Creek, Siverston, North Tobacco Garden, Bailey, Grail, Glass Bluff, Reunion BAy, Elidah, Robinson Lake, and three wildcats.

Hess is putting in a six-well multi-pad in Robinson Lake, SENE 32-155N-93W.

The permits include a new Whiting well in the South Heart area, a wildcat, targeting, again, the TFS.

SM: Three-Well Simul-Frac Completion (Bakken, ND, USA)

I don't know if anyone else has done simul-frac of three wells in the Bakken (I haven't seen any other similar reports) and I haven't researched the technology, so I have to imagine what it means.

SM announces that it drilled a three-well simul-frac completion pilot in a 1,280-acre spacing unit in its Bear Den prospect; the pilot project was completed in mid-October. The 24-hour IP for the three combined Bakken wells was about 6,000 boe, restrictred on choke with high flowing pressures. As of the date of this press release, November 2, 2010, all three wells continue to flow with high pressure.

• Norby 16-20H, long lateral, 10-stage fracture; 7-day average production: 955
• Norby 9-20H, long lateral, 10-stage fracture; 7-day average production: 1,100 
• Wilson 8-20H, long lateral, 20-stage fracture; 7-day average production: 1,140

All things being equal, it looks like 10-stage is as good as 20-stage fracturing.

SM Energy also completed Lee 13-8H this past quarter

• Lee 13-8, long lateral, 14-stage fracture; 7-day and 30-day, 900 and 650, respectively

North Dakota #1 In Oil! Ahead of Alaska, California and Texas! Combined! (Sunflower Oil)

The numbers are in and North Dakota is #1 in oil. Sunseed oil.
North Dakota should set a record when the sunflower harvest is complete. From the Bismarck Tribune:

• North Dakota will produce 49 percent of the nation’s sunseeds this year; together, North Dakota and South Dakota will produce 77 percent of the nation’s crop.
• More significant for the state’s growers is that this year they will average 1,638 pounds per acre, a record yield and a full 120 pounds above last year’s good yields, according to the USDA. The previous record was 1,586 pounds an acre in 2005.
• If this year’s yields bear out, they will be 24 percent higher than the 10-year average of 1,321 pounds per acre, from 1999-2008.

Some say the yields might be as high as 3,000 pounds per acre in some areas. 

And the oil content is excellent.

• The quality of North Dakota’s crop, in terms of oil content, also is high, with good test weight.
• Oil content is coming in at 43 percent to 44 percent, well above the standard of 40 percent.

Demand is high. While production is hitting records in North Dakota, bad weather in other major producing areas -- particularly Russia -- has hit production elsewhere.


From: "Everything is Illuminated."