Updates
March 13, 2012: Whiting testing the Scallion formation in the far southwest corner of North Dakota, just north of Beach.
Original Post
Whiting also refers to the Scallion as the "false Bakken" or the "Scallion interval." I blogged about that almost exactly one year ago.
Back in January, 2010, Continental Resources announced a non-economic well in the Scallion, but felt the zone still had potential:
Continental Resources Inc., Enid, Okla., said an initial test of a horizontally drilled section of Scallion limestone in west-central North Dakota produced at an uneconomic 7-day rate of 65 b/d and plans no further drilling at present.The Scallion has produced oil since the 1960's (mainly in Manitoba, about a 100 miles north of this area in North Dakota, but they've all been vertical (conventional) wells. Whiting now plans to test the Scallion with horizontal wells.
Scallion, a lower member of the Lodgepole formation of Mississippian age, lies at 9,500 ft just above the Upper Bakken shale.
The company drilled one lateral in the Scallion leg with a multistage plug-perf style frac.
Continental Resources plans to monitor activity by other operators in this part of the play before drilling more test wells. Scallion has produced oil since the 1960s from about 2,000 ft in the North Virden pool in Manitoba.
From the Q&A portion of the Whiting 2Q11 conference call regarding the Scallion:
[The Scallion is] definitely a resource play, you'll find it very similar to the Bakken. It's a great source rock by any standard. You can compare it to any of the other things that we're doing right now so. But it is a swing for the fence, there. What we're really trying to do is demonstrate the presence of reservoir rock and therefore, OOIP, and there's very little information out there. So we got a lot of what we call acorns in that part of the world, that kind of 2 or 3 county area that are all vertical wells that have produced oil out of the Scallion, and so that's one of the big things we go by. And so we're going to try it with a modern horizontal, and see how that works for us, and a lot of running room.
location counts...CLL was not in the hood
ReplyDeleteTypo? CLR?
ReplyDeleteoops yes CLR
ReplyDeleteIts an old post to be replying but I know of a person who has significant mineral rights in this area and who has contacted the subcontractor who handles Whitings lease writing. Whiting is very interested but will not be in this area in the near future. They don't want to lease anything they can't develop in the next five years and they like all others have a backlog of leases to address and wells to be drilled and put into production, in the west, before leases expire. Things will go east into mercer county and the scallion but not for at least five years, too much to do in the west right now. During that time they will perfect drilling and extraction technique to make it cost effective to put into production.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I think we're barely in the second inning and additional surprises in the Williston Basin could push us into extra innings.
ReplyDelete