Friday, February 4, 2011

Week 5: January 29 -- February 4, 2011

What's Going On With Zastoupil and "Oil for America" -- I've Got a Secret?

Breakdown of the 1,180 Wells on the Confidential List in North Dakota

Breakdown of the 168 Active Rigs in North Dakota

Denbury Doubles Reserves in 2010

Kinder Morgan To Go Public

Four Hess Wells Come Off Confidential List (91, 345, 511, and 584)

More Data That North Dakota Will Surpass Alaska in Oil Production if Trend Continues

Some Selected Data Points in North Dakota: Oil Permits / Wells

Another Bulk Storage Plant and Loading Terminal in Western North Dakota -- Epping, ND

Enbridge and First Solar Strengthen Relationship

Warren Buffett: Buy What You Know. Thoughts On Enbridge, ONEOK, and Kinder Morgan

Breakdown of KOG's 70,000 Acres in the Bakken

Legacy To Extend Its Spearfish Play Into North Dakota

Siverston Field Update (Note all field updates are in the sidebar at the right)

Surprising Madison Well in North Dakota: Paid For Itself in Three Months?

China, Chesapeake, Eagle Ford and Now Niobrara

Hess Plans to Double Bakken Production by Year-End (2011)

USEG Announces a New Partnership and A Great Well

Breakdown of World Energy Consumption, by Fuel

Syrian-Lebanese in North Dakota

February, 2011, NDIC Hearing Dockets

Common Sense on Energy: the Swedish Experience

4 comments:

  1. Petro-Hunt drilled a well in Dawson County, MT (Sec. 2, T19N-R53E). It was a short
    leg extending up into the next township. When the well was first announced it was a red river. However, the Montana Oil & Gas Commission has it listed as a Bakken producer and averaging 550 BOPD.

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  2. Interesting. Even in Montana the two formations are quite far apart. Pretty good well for a Red River, 550. Sounds like a Bakken. Interesting.

    Dawson County is the county south of Richland County (in Montana), home of Elm Coulee, where the current ND Bakken began. ("ND Bakken" as opposed to the "Alberta Bakken")

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  3. I believe the Montana Oil and Gas Commission made a mistake in calling the formation bakken. If you access the board orders, it reads Red River. This would make sense because Petro-Hunt drilled a good Red River Well in T20N-R53E.

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  4. Thank you. If that is indeed a Red River well that is a very good return (500 bbls/IP) notwithstanding all the hype/controversy about IPs. (I might be time to update a stand-alone piece on IPs.)

    But I digress.

    I opined many months ago (maybe more than a year ago) that with all the interest in the Bakken right now, folks have "forgotten" about legacy formations (such as the Red River).

    It is a quirk of the oil business that an oil company "holds by production" ALL the formations even though only one formation may be producing.

    It explains why some wells (often called "stripper wells") producing just a few barrels/day are allowed to continue to produce. By continuing to produce even at a very low rate, the producer "holds" the other formations (as well as the possibility of re-working the "old" producing formation).

    Thus, when one sees a Red River with this kind of return, it leads to me to believe that there remains plenty of opportunity in these legacy formations.

    Accountants determine the NPV of a well (e.g., BEXP recent presentation gives an NPV of its core Bakken wells to be upwards of $11 million) but they are not including the potential of a payout from other formations.

    I cannot afford to buy an ounce of gold these days and pay for storage on top of that, but I can certainly afford to invest in an occasional share of companies with assets in the ground in western North Dakota.

    ReplyDelete

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