Another Operator in the Bakken (Montana Acreage); a Toofer --- Includes an iPad Story

Link here to Fort Worth's Star-Telegram. (Also in the Billings Gazette.)

A Texas company has bought oil and gas leases on almost 75,000 acres in northeast Montana's McCone County in a move that could portend a significant westward expansion of the Bakken oil patch, government officials and a company representative said Wednesday.

San Antonio-based Donco Inc. paid more than $13.5 million for the leases in a competitive auction held Tuesday by the federal Bureau of Land Management. It marks one of the largest federal lease acquisitions by a single company in Montana in recent years, BLM spokesman Kristen Lenhardt said.

Donco is the parent company of Shale Exploration LLC.

Shale Exploration President Sam Tallis said Wednesday that the company aims to amass leases on roughly 200,000 acres in McCone and neighboring Garfield counties. He said drilling could begin next year.

And in the same story, the iPads:

In April, Shale Exploration donated $130,000 to the Scobey Public Schools in Daniels County to purchase iPads - tablet computers made by Apple Inc. - for all the district's students. A month later, the company donated $20,000 to the Montana Rescue Mission Women's and Family Shelter in Billings.

Tallis said he hopes to establish a similar close relationship with residents of Garfield and McCone counties.

Garfield and McCone counties are well west of North Dakota. Circle (McCone County), MT, I assume, is about 80 miles west of North Dakota. Jordan (Garfield County), MT, I assume is about 160 miles west of North Dakota. This seems well on the edge of the Bakken if not outside it; so, yes, the company will be targeting other formations as well.

From wiki:

Garfield County is noteworthy as the site of the discovery and excavation of four of the world's dozen or so major specimens (as of 1994) of Tyrannosaurus rex within the county.

Neither story was particularly important to post, but together they make an interesting post. Maybe. Thank you to "anon 1" for finding this particular story; I certainly would have missed it.