Updates
December 26, 2012: still on confidential; drilling may be complete. Possibly targeting the Lodgepole.
Later, 11:01 pm: I was pretty excited when I saw this rig and tying it to oil service activity in Minot, but readers have suggested I may be a bit excessively exuberant in my connecting the dots this time. Smile. It wouldn't be the first time of seeing too much. See the comments; they are very, very good. And much appreciated.
Original Post
The reader noticed a rig a couple of miles east of Voltaire, North Dakota. Voltaire is about 23 miles southeast of Minot. This is significantly east of the current boom, and significantly east of any known oil activity in the Williston Basin.
This is a good time to take a look at the location of Minot / Voltaire, North Dakota.
Now, re-familiarize yourself with the oil-producing locations in North Dakota.
Overlay the second map over the first map. Oil production in this area? Oil activity in this area? Nada. Nothing. Zilch.
Now, go to the NDIC GIS map, locate Voltaire, Minot, and the local area. Over the last twenty or thirty years, there have been a half-dozen wells drilled a bit to the west and/or south (all dry) and even fewer drilled farther east (again, all dry). Those dry wells, were for the most part, were targeting the Madison formation.
The rig/permit east of Voltaire; southeast of Minot:
- 24329, conf, Cambridge Production Inc, Larson 1, Wildcat. A vertical.
And it's a genuine wildcat. Nothing in that area.
Cambridge Production is an oil and gas company located in Amarillo, Texas. Some of their permitting activity can be found at this site:
http://search.amarillo.com/fast-elements.php?type=standard&profile=amarillo&querystring=%22CAMBRIDGE%20PRODUCTION%20INC.%22The company appears not to be publicly traded, so it will be hard to find out much about them.
Hold that thought.
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Baker Hughes built three mega-complexes in the past couple of years: one each in Dickinson, Minot, and Williston. There has been some speculation why Baker Hughes would build such a large complex in Minot. Minot seems a bit east of the current oil activity to warrant a complex of this size. I have not been to Minot recently, but apparently there is more oil service activity in the city than activity in the local area would seem to warrant (e-mail from folks living/working there). [And, of course, the huge, new airport to be built in Minot.]
It's possible that all this oil services activity in Minot is there because a) Williston was simply getting too expensive/too crowded to locate there (but this would not explain a third Baker Hughes complex, the one in Minot; they were already in Williston); and/or, b) the Spearfish activity north and northwest of Minot.
But what if after thirty years or so, the oil industry has newer data that suggests there is recoverable oil southeast of Minot? This would explain the Cambridge wildcat and all the oil service activity in Minot.
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Perhaps just idle rambling, but a vertical well east of Voltaire is a very interesting development. And I have to thank a reader for alerting me to this rig east of Voltaire. I completely missed it.
