Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Update On Two Incredible Whiting Wells in the Sanish -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

This post is for newbies, just to remind folks how really spectacular the Bakken is.

As a reminder, everyone agrees that Bakken wells, on average, will produce at least 400,000 bbls of oil over their 35-year history.

This is what I wrote about a new well in the Sanish on February 22, 2010:
It seems every time a well comes off the confidential list these days, there is something intriguing. Today it's Whiting's Tollefson well in the Sanish.

Specifically, #18109, Tollefson 44-10H, 10-152-91. This well is a long lateral (two sections) but the GIS map server does not yet say which two sections it is in. Common sense tells me it is in section 10 and 3 (152-91). But there is already another Whiting well in section 3 (still confidential), in the opposite corner: it is #17912, the Sorenson 11-3H.

If the Tollefson does not go into section 3 (actually it can't go anywhere but section 3), there are no surrounding sections without an existing well. The wells in this area are all Whiting and EOG wells. Almost all of them have IPs of between 1,000 and 1,500. It will be interesting to see if these new wells come in with similar IPs.
These two wells, 18109-Tollefson and 17912-Sorenson,  have turned out to be outstanding wells.

The Tollefson was completed in September, 2010.

The Sorenson was completed in February, 2010.

Cumulative to date for the Tollefson: 361K

Cumulative to date for the Sorenson: 435K

Both are still flowing WITHOUT a pump. Quite incredible.

At $75/bbl --> about $30 million for each well; $60 million for the two at the wellhead. And neither is two years old; and they will produce for 35 years. And they've already reached the "average EUR" that folks talk about for Bakken wells.

4 comments:

  1. Wow...down to 192 Rigs today!

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  2. Knee-jerk reaction:
    a) winter
    b) some moving to Montana
    c) competition with Eagle Ford
    d) frack teams can't keep up -- so many wells waiting to be fracked; and fracking will slow down significantly during the winter.
    e) infrastructure (roads) a challenge during good weather; can you imagine getting crews out to all those wells in ND winter weather; the operators probably remember last winter

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  3. Also the impact of the holiday season. I counted 21 rigs MIRU (moving in rigging up). Taking that into account the number rigs in North Dakota is 213.

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  4. I had forgotten that.

    And tied into all of the above, is the number of workers that return home (Idaho, Michigan, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Texas, etc) for an extended, but well-deserved "vacation" with their families.

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