Trivial Anecdotal Stories -- Rambling -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

This site began as an educational site.

Actually, not quite true. I started the site to try to keep track of what was going on in the Bakken. I initially considered "Word" documents, etc., but then realized HTML was the way to go. I decided to share the HTML postings when I first saw two other sites suggest the Bakken was being hyped and I wanted to provide some balance. Actually, not a balance, but a rebuttal, I guess. I certainly wasn't balanced in my enthusiasm for the Bakken. 

I had not planned to post anything about the investing side of the Bakken initially, but it was soon obvious that one could not separate what was happening in the Bakken (geology, technology) without following the investment activity.

I admit I am inappropriately exuberant and have said more than once that my personal financial investment in the Bakken is much more conservative than what the blog might suggest.

Having said that, I have two stories that I cannot get out of my mind. The first story is about an acquaintance (in a certain sense) just like you and me who bought into Medtronic when that company was just starting out and has since become a millionaire many times over.

The second story is about meeting another person on Amtrak, about 40 years old, who has never worked a day in his life, because his father gave the children all the Microsoft stock the father had bought when MSFT was just starting out. (I would not want his life; having never worked in his life, made for a very dull person when we actually started talking.)

But I think about those folks, who literally put their total investment dollars when they first started investing in companies like Microsoft, Apple, Medtronic, IBM, when these companies first started out.

I wonder if we might be seeing the same thing with BEXP, Whiting, CLR, Oasis? Sometimes looking at quarterly statements, daily fluctuation in the price of oil, wild volatility in the stock market results in folks like me forgetting two things: a) oil will become ever more dear over the next 30 years; and, b) CLR has almost 1,000,000 acres in the Bakken, the most incredible oil play in the lower 48, according to some.

It makes me wonder if it would be easier just to put all investment dollars in CLR, Oasis, BEXP, or Whiting, and then forget about following this stuff, and living life, doing something else. I have no doubt these companies are going to look a lot different 30 years from now.

Just rambling, but if one steps back and looks at some of the things going on in the oil patch in North Dakota, it is mind boggling. The link takes you to the wells that I updated today. These are huge wells, and they are literally the tip of the iceberg, as they say.  But a Bakken well producing 100,000 bbls in the first six months and this well is expected to produce for 30 years (yes, I know, at a horrendous decline rate, but it's all about paying off the wells as quickly as possible, and the EURs).

Again, just rambling, but when I see 1,000 point-drops in the stock market and then look at companies like CLR with a million net acres in the Bakken, one can only think of some huge opportunities.