Flashback -- 48,000 Wells Needed To Drill Out the Bakken -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Back on August 16, 2011, I posted my hunch that it would take 36,000 wells to drill out the Bakken. At the time, the general consensus was 20,000. [Later Harold Hamm, CLR/CEO set the number at 48,000.]

Today the Minot News reports that the NDIC has revised the 20,000 figure up to 33,000. That is very, very close to my number of 36,000 back in August.

The number is mindboggling 33,000. That's the number of wells needed to fully develop the Bakken in North Dakota over the next years, said the state's top oil and gas regulator.

Lynn Helms, director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources in Bismarck, said North Dakota currently has 6,600 wells capable of producing and about 6,000 wells producing on any given day.

Helms, who spoke Sept. 1 to members of the Minot Area Chamber of Commerce's Energy Committee, said 2,000 is the number of wells a year expected to be drilled in North Dakota.

At that rate, Helms said it will take 225 drilling rigs, which create 47,000 jobs in western North Dakota.

That's a lot of proppant.