When the Bakken Drilling Quits (Thirty Years From Now), They Can Always Go Back to the Madison -- North Dakota, USA

Elsewhere, "AmericanOilND" asked for past six months production for well #2836. As noted, that Madison well has produced almost 2 million bbls of oil (and easily over 2 million when adding in the natural gas produced)

That got me to wondering. It is the general consensus that the EUR of the average Bakken well will be 603,000 bbls, producing from 25 to 35 years.

I was curious how the other Madison wells did in the Clear Creek oil field, now that most of the wells drilled in 1961 time period are now permanently abandoned. Here are the results (file number, status, cumulative oil as of this month's NDIC report):

• 2850 pa 71K bbls
• 2882 dry
• 5955 dry
• 2764 a 76K bbls
• 2836 a 1,949,817 bbls
• 2893 pa 37K bbls
• 2903 pa 538,643 bbls
• 2944 pa 461,411 bbls
• 2737 a 965,968 bbls
• 2763 pa 1,040,609 bbls
• 2787 pa 1,242,603 bbls
• 2252 pa 463,594 bbls
• 2365 pa 356,535 bbls
• 2593 pa 399,342 bbls
• 2594 pa dry
• 2982 pa 19K bbls
• 2144 pa 613,246 bbls
• 2797 pa 288,801 bbls
• 2726 pa120,833 bbls

There were a few clunkers in there, but 7 of the 19 were above 500,00 and all but perhaps six paid for themselves, with most of them of them doing very, very well.

The clunkers pull the average way down, but let's say you had a formation that had not clunkers, e.g., the Bakken. One can easily see where this exercise leads. The average Bakken well might have a EUR of 603,000 bbls, but can you imagine how good the good wells are going to be to pull the average up to account for the poorer wells?