Spacing in the Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Folks are starting to notice an interesting "phenomenon" with regarding to the size of spacing units for oil drilling in North Dakota.

When you go to the NDIC GIS map server, you can go to the drop-down menu on the right and select the "Drilling/Spacing" folder and then click on the "Bakken." From there you can select the size of spacing unit(s) you are interested in.

Right now, one can only select the Bakken on the GIS map server, at least as far as I can tell.

This will now bring us back to an earlier discussion regarding exactly how the "Bakken" is defined.

It is my understanding that the Bakken on the GIS map server refers to the NDIC definition of the "Bakken Pool" which consists of five formations: the upper, middle, and lower Bakken; and, the upper and lower Three Forks/Sanish.

The NDIC hearing dockets always refer to the wells targeting the Bakken formations or the Three Forks formations as part of the Bakken Pool (at least from what I can tell).

In the March, 2011, hearing dockets, Slawson has asked the state to establish spacing for the Lodgepole in the Murphy Creek field in Dunn County.

Hopefully, we will see a drop-down menu on the GIS map server to show spacings for more than just the Bakken in the future.