Mike Filloon's Series on the Three Great Fields in the Bakken -- North Dakota, USA

Mike has posted Part III of his series on the three best oil fields in the Bakken.

Yesterday was the link to Part I, three great fields in the Bakken (Alger, Sanish, and the Parshall).

Today is Part II. When you go to that link, the first thing I would point out is the cumulative number of bbls -- look at those numbers. Mike is only including wells that came into production in June, 2010, or later, and look at the number of wells over 100,000 bbls. It took legacy wells (Madison, etc) up to 20 years to have returns like this. And, there are "no" dry wells in the Bakken. I sound like a broken record. Sorry.

The second thing: look for the "TFH" wells, the wells that targeted the Three Forks formation. Those are great wells, also. So, imagine four wells/section targeting the middle Bakken and four wells/section targeting the Three Forks.

I don't want to get too crazy here, but remember, there may be more than one "bench" in the Three Forks formation, also, at least in some parts of the state. Whiting, I believe, has talked about the additional "benches." (It's possible it was CLR; I sometimes forget, but it was either Whiting or CLR.)

I hope Mike doesn't mind, but his concluding paragraph is what keeps me excited about the Bakken:

24-hour IP rates are not a true indicator of production at 10 to 12 months. But, Brigham does consistently outperform during this time frame. Over 3 to 5 months Brigham is significantly better than Whiting. I am unsure if these specific wells will continue this after a year of production or if average production will be consistent for both companies. All said, both Whiting and Brigham are doing very well in these two fields. One point I would like to make is the very large increase in production by both companies over just a year or two. It is very possible some of these wells could have recoveries of over 1000 MBOe.

I do believe that at least one driller (I believe it was BEXP, which would make sense) said that higher IPs do mean faster payback and greater EURs and there seems to be general consensus that is true. I think the point that Mike is making that IPs between 2,500 (BEXP) and 1,500 (Whiting) don't result in a huge difference at 10 to 12 months, but there's no question in my mind that an IP of 2,500 (BEXP) is a significantly different well at 10 -12 months than one that has an IP of 500 ("company x").

With regard to "some of these wells could have recoveries of over 1000 MBOe" here's an update on some monster wells (as of August 31, 2011):

• 17092, Behr 11-34H, Whiting, 3,027, Sanish, 743K bbls.
• 17222, Austin 18-21H, EOG, 1,769, Parshall, 696K bbls.
• 17227, Austin 21-28H, EOG, 3, 292, Parshall, 747K bbls.
• 16954, Austin 6-15H, EOG, 3,633, Parshall, 641K bbls.
• 17263, Chandler James 25-36H, Murex, 3,124, Sanish, 767K bbls. Not that it matters, but this well is still listed as "F" -- flowing, no pump.
• 16059, USA 2D-3-1H, Petro-Hunt, see Charlson Field update for this, the most successful well to date in the current boom, 1,181K bbls (over the one million mark). Not that it matters, but this well is still listed as "F" -- flowing, no pump. Be sure to read the comment at this post.
  

It truly is going to be interesting to look at the cumulative numbers at 10 years of production. Folks, we are not even out five years yet. Again, Mike only looked at wells that were put into production as of June, 2010, or later -- that's only fifteen months or so ago.

Anyway, another nice article.