Unitizing Mineral Acres in Little Missouri State Park -- Here We Go -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Link here.

The State Department of Mineral Resources is looking at a plan to unitize 30,000 surface and mineral acres [in the Little Missouri State Park], which basically puts all the oil into one lease and treats all the surface acres as if they're one gigantic spacing unit.

The State Industrial Commission will hear the case in December.

As proposed, the unit would include 80 some wells drilled from 30 to 40 multi-well pads, with six of the well pads within the lease boundary of the Little Missouri State Park. The park is located about 15 miles north of Killdeer in the rugged breaks of the Badlands.

The state owns 1,000 acres at the park and leases 4,592 acres.

Unitization requires that 60 percent of mineral owners agree to the plan:

In this case, Burlington Resources owns 44 percent of the minerals because of territorial railroad land grants and is promoting the concept. Individuals own 40 percent, the federal government 12 percent and the state owns 7 percent.

Environmentally and ecologically the plan seems to make sense. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and whether the environment wins out or money wins out. I have my hunch.

Warren Buffett owns a lot of this through his shares in COP (BR).

For all the Bakken truckers:

Kenworth Down Under, Slim Dusty
Through the land of the free, the land that I love, the land with the northern lights up above....