WOW! OXY USA Has a Gusher! Wells Coming Off Confidential List Tuesday

Bakken Operations 

Jim Creek oil field has been updated.

Active rigs: 183 (steady)

Wells coming off confidential list today:

• 21830, 1,824, OXY USA, Beatrice Kubischta 2-15-22H-143-96, Fayette, t6/12; cum 62K 10/12;
• 22571, 287, Hunt, Bear Butte 1-4-9H, Bear Butte, t9/12; cum 12K 10/12;
• 22934, drl, CLR, Salem 2-6H, Dollar Joe, s6/12; trip gas at 1,700 units; 10-foot flare;

Wow, that's a nice OXY USA well. Good for them! I am thrilled. Mineral owners -- great news! For newbies, I track OXY USA here.

Other News

RBN Energy: What is causing natural gas price fluctuations in New England?

The short answer is that demand for natural gas in Boston and other New England cities is exceeding available supply, causing prices to spike as LDC’s scramble to meet their commitments. These supply problems are being caused by a combination of infrastructure and pricing constraints in the New England market that are still with us, regardless of the onslaught of shale production.

From a supply perspective it might seem logical to assume that New England is close enough to the more than 7 Bcf/d of new Marcellus basin natural gas production coming online over the past two years to be blessed with adequate supplies. That is especially true considering that Spectra Energy who own the AGT pipeline have now completed several infrastructure projects to harness Marcellus gas into their northeast transmission system. However ... go to the link for the rest of the story.

We're starting to see some fallout from the "renewables" push in California; similar to what we're already seeing in Germany. Headline, front page story today in LA Times: alternative energy (that's why they call it now: will result in soaring (that was their word, not mine) electrical rates, and, on top of that, will probably ruin the environment (i.e., the desert) in the process. All because of a computer projection that the earth could warm by two degrees over the next 100 years.

Some good news from DOI Ken Salazar, at least the headline: will facilitate mineral exploration in New Mexico: oil, gas, and potash. 

As part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy to promote domestic energy and mineral production, Secretary of the Interior (DOI) Ken Salazar on Monday issued a new Secretarial Order to facilitate the co-development of oil, natural gas and potash resources within the 500,000-acre Designated Potash Area (DPA) in southeast New Mexico.

Something tells me this is a red herring, compared to all the land taken off the table for mineral development this past year. It would be interesting to follow the (campaign) money, but not enough time ... and no interest. Just call me cynical this morning.

Meanwhile, once the wildlife service declares a prairie chicken endangered, DOI will take more western land off the table:

Once found in abundant numbers across much of the five states of Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, the lesser prairie-chickens' historical range of native grasslands and prairies has been reduced by an estimated 84 percent. The State of Colorado has listed the species as threatened. The Service first identified the lesser prairie-chicken as a candidate for ESA protection in 1998.

Would the lesser prairie-chicken habitat overlie the Mississippi Lime. I honestly don't know; not enough time to check. Just call me cynical this morning.

Clarity on the ObamaCliff: before the granddaughters came down for breakfast this morning, I happened to catch a few minutes of one of my least-favorite talking heads on CNBC -- Howard Dean. He suggested and all agreed that we are heading for a recession in 2013 of about -1.5% and then finish the year overall at about 2% GDP. So, the picture becomes a big clearer. That's the trial balloon; if not much push back, the president will go on vacation, we will go over the ObamaCliff, and will meander through a horrendous '13.

Front page story, section B, WSJ: in world of big stuff, the US still rules. Huge story. I always thought all that Komatsu stuff I see everywhere was built overseas. Nope, built in Peoria, IL. Who wudda thought? Eighty miles south, in Decatur, IL: Caterpillar Inc. A huge graphic shows the incredible growth in truck sales for trucks that able to carry 200 short tons or more of material.

GM getting ready to idle US plants due to inventory: one plant will extend planned two-week vacatin to three weeks; a second plant likely to go idle.

And one last story to end the post: Detroit death watch.  Some data points:

• if Detroit goes bankrupt, it will be the largest city to date; only LA and Chicago could be bigger
• actions to date: a) slashed wages by 10% (timid); b) increased health premiums and co-pays (probably not enough); c) reduced current-worker pensions and suspended 2.25% cost-of-living raises
• will save $60 million this year; city will still be $50 million in the red next year
• third-party actuaries' estimate of city's retirement liabilities: $11 billion; nearly twice what the city says
• defined-benefit pensions that let workers retire in their 40s; many retirees living into their 80s (not unusual any more) will draw benefits more than twice as long as they worked 

The US military retirement program is even more generous: folks can retire in their late 30's -- enlist at age 17 with parent's consent, retire after 20 years --> 37 years of age; medical care for life (though there are costs and co-pays), and not enough to retire on; post-retirement job required, but the retirement pay would probably cover basic living requirements

Starting To Get Clarification of How ObamaCare Will Affect Those New Bakken Oil Millionaires; Cheesecake Factory CEO Agrees

Link here to Reuters. 159 pages worth.

The Internal Revenue Service has released new rules for investment income taxes on capital gains and dividends earned by high-income individuals that passed Congress as part of the 2010 healthcare reform law.

The 3.8 percent surtax on investment income, meant to help pay for healthcare, goes into effect in 2013. It is the first surtax to be applied to capital gains and dividend income.

The tax affects only individuals with more than $200,000 in modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), and married couples filing jointly with more than $250,000 of MAGI.

The best line in the story:

Released late on Friday, the new regulations include a 0.9 percent healthcare tax on wages for high-income individuals.

Watch for a lot of stuff over the next two or three years to be "released late on Friday" including the new fracking regulations.

Cue up Connie Stevens. Repeat. For 159 pages of reading. And that's just a start. Wow, what were they thinking?

********************

Cheesecake Factory CEO agrees.

On Monday's CBS This Morning, Cheesecake Factory CEO David Overton spotlighted the looming economic impact of Obamacare's implementation, especially on small enterprises: "For those businesses that don't cover their employees, they'll be in for a very expensive situation." Overton also warned that the cost of the law would be passed on to customers.

My hunch: average meal will increase almost negligibly. But a lot of restaurants "on the margin" will go out of business. The strong will get stronger. The weak will simply fade away. 

WOW! BNSF vs ONEOK -- SeekingAlpha

A huge "thank you" to a reader for sending me this one -- one I had not seen, and would have missed. Most readers will enjoy.

BNSF vs ONEOK.

Meanwhile, receivers of Bakken crude, such as Phillips 66, have been on an absolute tear. They buy the cheaper Bakken crude and sell the refined gasoline at prices tied more closely to the higher price of Brent.

Warren owns a lot of Phillips 66, also.

Five (5) New Permits

Bakken Operations

Active rigs: 182 (steady)

Five (5) new permits --

• Operators: Whiting (4), Zavanna
• Fields: Sanish (Mountrail), Park (Billings), Williston (Williams)
• Comments: None

Wells coming off confidential list were reported earlier; see sidebar at the right.

Not Surprising -- New York Times -- More Cutbacks; iPad "The Daily" --> The End

Link to The Week.

The New York Times on Monday announced that it would offer buyout packages to 30 newsroom employees, and that layoffs would ensue if the 30 spots were not voluntarily filled.

Citing a difficult "economic environment" that has led in recent years to a 60 percent staff reduction on the paper's business side, Executive Editor Jill Abramson said, "There is no getting around the hard news that the size of the newsroom staff must be reduced."

While the loss of 30 jobs pales in comparison to the ousting of roughly 100 newsroom staffers in 2008, it is the latest evidence that the Times continues to struggle despite putting up a subscriber paywall, which was intended to extract more revenue directly from online readers.

The company added an impressive 83,000 digital subscribers in the third quarter, and is on track to have more digital subscribers than print subscribers in the next year or two. But print and digital revenues in the third quarter dropped by 10.9 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively. The problem is that "digital simply generates much less revenue than the print business," says Henry Blodget at Business Insider. "So, as the print business continues to shrink, the newsroom has to shrink."

********************

Digital news has its own problems; link to Politico here.

News Corp. announced today that 'The Daily,' the iPad-only paper Murdoch launced in Feb. 2011, will shut down this month.

Jesse Angelo, the founding editor-in-chief of The Daily and ex-executive editor of The New York Post, will become publisher of the Post. "Technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff, will be folded into The Post," according to a News Corp. press release.

"From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term.

And so it goes. 

Another Race to Watch: Additional Rail Terminals in Washington State or Texas-Lousiana? Who Will Get There First?

RBN Energy: the Nederland terminal in Texas, on the Gulf Coast.

This is the second time I have linked this story today. But I'm linking this story for a different reason this time.

One of the rewards of blogging is putting things in perspective. The other day there was a story about the possibility of a larger oil terminal in Washington State to receive Bakken oil by rail. In that story, there was this data point:

While Gateway Pacific could draw as many as nine loaded [BNSF] trains per day at maximum capacity, Abendhoff said the BP refinery expects one loaded oil train every two days, ...

That's nice, but it doesn't give me a feeling if this is huge (one loaded train every two days), normal, or not a big deal.

Today, a bit of clarity on that point. From the linked RBN Energy story on Nederland:

The current rail capabilities at Nederland can offload 30 cars a day – meaning they can handle a unit train in four days. Sunoco is in the process of upgrading the rail capabilities to handle more rail cars. Crude oil arriving by rail can be offloaded into pipelines or onto barges for redelivery throughout the region.

Two observations: a) for the Gulf Coast, there could be a lot of demand for increased rail capacity; and, b) the Gateway Pacific could be a huge terminal -- one unit train every two days, but could scale up to as many as nine unit trains per day.

I guess it's up to the faux environmentalists and the Washington state government to decide whether they want the jobs in their state, or the jobs in Texas. One knows the unit train terminals will be built in Texas if they make financial sense.

So Much Good News Today -- Why Not an Apple Story -- This Is Not A Bakken Story -- Apple SmartPhone Overtakes LG, Moves To #2

Link here to MacRumors.com.

Apple captured the number two slot in all U.S. mobile phone makers, both smartphone and non-smartphone, for the first time, according to a new report by research firm comScore.

Samsung maintained their lead with 26.3% in overall mobile phone userbase, with Apple coming in second at 17.8% and LG .2 points behind in the number three slot with 17.6%. Apple gained 1.5% in the three month period starting in August 2012 and ending in October 2012, which includes the first full month of iPhone 5 availability. LG, Motorola and HTC all saw their share shrink by .8, .2 and .4% respectively. Back in April, Apple leapfrogged Motorola to become the No. 3 mobile phone maker.

I assume that's even more impressive because, as far as I know, Apple does not make a non-smartphone, only the iPhone.  

KOG: Motley Fool Update

More fluff from Motley Fool but there's so much good news today, this story fits in just as well:

Kodiak Oil & Gas is quickly becoming a major player in the Bakken Shale.

The company finished 3Q12producing 15,855 barrels per day, and it plans to increase that by an incredible 68% to 27,000 barrels by the end of 2012.

This company needs the rapid expansion, too, because other companies such as EOG Resources and Continental Resources are able to drill much more cost-efficiently.

Kodiak has to focus hard on production to keep its margins high; it uses only 100% ceramics in its wells rather than sand, which, though costlier, produce the maximum from each well possible. In the video at the link, Motley Fool energy analyst Joel South tells us if the company is actually hitting its lofty growth goals, and what its margins look like, which are the two key things for investors to look at here.

The ObamaCliff -- Absolutely Nothing To Do With The Bakken -- The GM Pickup Inventory; Meanwhile, Honda YOY Up Almost 40% In The US; French Car Industry On Track For Worse Year Since 1997

Updates

December 3, 2012:  This must be the day for pickup stories. See the link provided by "anon 1" in comments:  GMC and Chevrolet Bi-Fuel Pickup Production Begins.

Original Post

Some folks suggest that pickup sales are one of the best measures of an expanding or contracting economy.

First, some old data, back to August, 2012:

Only one more day until we get August sales data, and September 4th will bring us the latest inventory numbers. Here at TTAC, we’re keeping an eye on GM’s full-size truck inventory, which is as high as 145 days for the GMC Sierra – well above the 100 day supply that’s considered safe for full-size trucks.

Now, fast forward to December 3, 2012 (that would be today): GM was back up to 139 days in November for full-size pickups compared to 110 days in October.

Two comments: a) GM is on record as seeing no need to plan for the ObamaCliff; and, b) the GM pickup inventory trend is going in the wrong direction.

The good news: my hunch is you can get a good deal on a new pickup right now.

************************

Meanwhile,

Honda Motor's American Honda reports November 2012 U.S. sales of 116,580 units, an increase of 38.9% YoY. I don't invest in Honda, but I love the Honda Civic, so this is just a personal note, for archival purposes.

This is not an investment site; so do not make any investment decisions based on what you read at this site.

**************************

It's easy to forget that the Eurozone is in a recession. France's car market is on coursefor its worst year since 1997, industry association CCFA said when reporting new car registrations fell 19.2 percent in November.

It's Official: A Trillion-Barrel Reservoir -- The Bakken

Updates

December 7, 2012: Additional comments on the importance of CLR's well successfully targeting the third bench of the Three Forks. (Link to KX News; regional links break often, break early.)

Alison Ritter with ND Oil and Gas can't confirm or deny the news because it's a confidential well.

But she says if oil is being recovered from the third bench.

There were wells at certain points in history, the EOG well in 2006 and the Brigham well in 2009 that when you look back yes those were historical breakthroughs.

Did we know how big at the time? Maybe a little bit. Could this Continental well be something like that? You never know but there certainly is that potential there that two or three years from now we look back and say that Continental well really told us something about what was going on with the Three Forks," says Alison Ritter with North Dakota Oil & Gas.

December 6, 2012: Oil and Gas Journal picks up on the CLR story -- increasing estimates of the Bakken by 57%. 

Original Post

Well, sort of official:

a) 903 billion -- I round that to one trillion
b) the source, Continental Resources, may be a bit biased

But all the same: link to Bloomberg here.

Continental Resources Inc. (CLR), the largest owner of oil-drilling rights in the U.S. Bakken Shale, said the formation holds about 57 percent more crude than previously thought. The shares rose the most in more than three months.

The formation beneath North Dakota and Montana holds the equivalent of 903 billion barrels of so-called oil in place, compared with the company’s 2010 estimate of 577 billion, Oklahoma City-based Continental said in a statement today.

The Bakken’s potential expanded after the company was the first to successfully tap a deeper geological layer of the Three Forks zone, according to the statement. The breakthrough at the Charlotte 3-22H well represents the second exploration triumph in as many months for Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Harold Hamm.

The company announced a discovery known as the South Central Oklahoma Oil Province, or SCOOP, on Oct. 9 that may add 1.8 billion barrels to Continental’s reserves in coming years.

Regular readers know we've talked about a trillion-barrel reservoir for quite some time.

An Update On An Earlier Story: British Millionaires Leaving (NOT ABOUT THE BAKKEN)

A few days ago I posted a story about millionaires leaving Britain due to the punishing tax rates. Someone sent in a comment that said the story was bogus: I didn't post the comment because it did not provide a credible source. Today in the Wall Street Journal, we get more specific numbers:

A funny thing often happens on the way to soaking the rich: They don't stick around for the bath.

Take Britain, where Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs Service reports that the number of taxpayers declaring £1 million a year in income fell by more than 60% in fiscal 2010-2011 from the year before.  

That was the year that millionaires became liable for the 50% income-tax rate that Gordon Brown's government introduced in its final days in 2010, up from the previous 40% rate. Lo, the total number of millionaire tax filers plunged to 6,000 in 2010-2011, from 16,000 in 2009-2010.

The new tax was meant to raise about £2.5 billion more revenue. So much for that. In 2009-2010 British millionaires contributed about £13.4 billion to the public coffers, or just under 9% of the total tax liability of all taxpayers that year. At the 50% rate, the shrunken pool yielded £6.5 billion, or about 4.4%.

If you can't trust Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs Service, just who can you trust?

NOT THE BAKKEN: Best Sports Article Today -- In The WSJ

Link here to Alabama-Notre Dame: Oh my! in the WSJ.

Notre Dame was already in this game. Alabama got in Saturday by beating Georgia in the Southeastern Conference championship game in Atlanta. Georgia almost won, but in the closing minutes of the contest, the Bulldogs fell under the impression they were playing a leisurely game of Ultimate Frisbee, and time ran out before they had a chance to score and ruin everything. I know everybody feels bad for Georgia, and Georgia played great, but those Bulldogs were messing around with the desired narrative. The Crimson Tide versus the Fighting Irish was the dreamy matchup (non-Georgia football-loving) people wanted to see. Sorry. That fact is both annoying and true.

Go to the link for some fun reading.  I particularly enjoyed his description of the Miami Dolphins.

Incredible! I Can't Make This Stuff Up! The Norwegians. Chilled Natural Gas. Global Warming. Northwest Passage

Awesome! Just the other day, in response to a story about global warming, I posted:

a northwest passage to the Orient may yet appear

... and, here it is. Page C3, today's edition of the WSJ: gas tanker takes shortcut to Asia, with a photo.

A tanker full of chilled natural gas is about to complete a trip through the Arctic Ocean to Asia, as a combination of climate change, the shale-gas revolution and the earthquake in Japan opens a potentially disruptive trade route.

The tanker Ob River is scheduled to deliver a cargo of Norwegian gas to energy-starved Japan on Tuesday after traveling from Norway through the Arctic above Russia. The trip takes three weeks less than it would if the gas took its normal route though the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal and around Asia.

Three disparate events made the trip feasible and profitable. Climate change has meant ships can pass through the Arctic during the summer. A flood of U.S. shale gas helped push down prices in Europe, and higher demand in Asia, in part due to the Japanese earthquake, has made chilling and liquefying European gas for shipment to Asia economic.

Higher insurance expenses and the cost of an icebreaker to accompany the tanker are offset by the fact that a shorter voyage means a shorter lease period for the tanker.

Cool. No pun intended.

A Huge Win-Win For the IRS Due to the ObamaCliff -- Remotely Related to the Bakken and the Bakken Oil Millionaires

It is agreed: taxes are going up in 2013. It's just a matter of hammering out the details.

In response, companies are increasing payouts, accelerating payouts, or both -- before the end of 2012. See how money is being moved around. These increased/accelerated payouts will result in increased revenue for the IRS in 2012.

But, obviously, this is just a one-time event. Dividends will continue to be paid in 2013 and the out-years when the tax rates will be higher.

And, thus the federal government gets a two-fer with the ObamaCliff. 

It's always interesting to watch how things play out when there are major policy changes.

Coal: Another Nail in the Coffin

Updates

December 4, 2012: CNP will sells its track west of Tracy, MN, now that coal is dead. The link will take you to a video business news interview (which I hate [the video format, not the news, although in this case, that's bad, also]). The video noted that the cities of Mankato, MN, and Rochester, MN, were both against the CNP deal to ship coal from Wyoming through their cities to the east coast. It was noted that the Mayo Clinic was particularly involved in trying to stop the train coal shipments.

Original Post

From Yahoo! In-Play today:

Canadian Pacific announced it will take a Q4 pre-tax non-cash charge of ~$180 mln over Powder River Basin option: Co announced it will take a Q4 pre-tax non-cash charge of ~$180 mln ($107 mln after tax) on its option to build into the Powder River Basin (PRB).

When CP acquired the Dakota Minnesota & Eastern railroad in 2007, it also acquired the option to build a 260-mile extension of its network into coal mines in the PRB. Components of the charge include the option, engineering design costs, land and capitalized interest.

It is CP's intention to defer indefinitely plans to extend its rail network into the PRB coal mines based on continued deterioration in the market for domestic thermal coal, including a sharp deterioration in 2012.

Cue up Connie Francis.

National Geographic Article: North Dakota Oil and Rail

Nothing new for regular readers, but a nice overview for newbies, and a "feel-good" story in general.

Link here to National Geographic.com.

North Dakota surpassed Alaska this year as the number two oil-producing state. It's thanks to fracking—the extraction of oil from the state's Bakken Shale formation.

But all that oil would be stuck in the Midwest without trains.

"Rail is cool again," said Rusty Braziel, an energy analyst at RBN Energy.

U.S. railroads have seen the number of cars filled with petroleum products jump 44 percent in the past year. A large share of that traffic starts in North Dakota, where more oil is being transported by rail than by pipeline. That might be expected until more pipelines can be built.

More surprising is that shipping by rail, which is costlier than pipeline transport and raises new environmental concerns, may become a fixture of the industry and not just a temporary fix, analysts say.

And it's not just North Dakota that's becoming an oil-train hub. A new combination of drilling and extraction technologies has oil gushing from out-of-the-way fields from South Texas to Alberta, Canada. With few nearby pipelines, drillers flush with petroleum turned first to expensive trucks, then to trains as they sought to move their product to market. Indeed, oil trains—a throwback to the earliest days of the petroleum industry—have become key to exploiting the North American oil boom, which has the U.S. on track to lead the world in oil production within five years.

And if shipping by rail becomes a fixture, we can thank a) the faux environmentalists; and, b) the folks that agitated to kill the Keykstone XL.

By the way, Don noted that the last time the National Geographic did a story on North Dakota, it was about ... well, I will let you decide ... here's the link: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/emptied-north-dakota/bowden-text.html.

Then, around the turn of the 20th century, the railroads lured settlers, largely Norwegians and Germans, into the void with promises of homesteads. Towns were planted everywhere—what one state historian calls the Too Much Mistake—in this isolated, semiarid region until, starting with the Depression and the dust storms of the 1930s, the farms faltered, then failed. The state now holds dozens of abandoned towns. Today in western North Dakota a 3,000-acre (1,200 hectares) spread of wheat is necessary for survival, and so the ground is littered with dead towns and empty kitchens where people once painted the walls a cheery robin’s-egg blue.

My, how times have changed. Where are the Poppers?

RBN Energy: Looks At A Second Terminal Along the Gulf Coast

Continuing its series on Gulf Coast terminals, RBN Energy turns its attention to Nederland.

Unlike the brand spanking new ECHO Terminal, Nederland has been around for a hundred years or so since Sun Oil Company first set up a terminal in the early twentieth century. Sitting in the middle of all that crude oil and refining business has given rise to seriously good pipeline connections along the way. For starters, Nederland is connected to the four nearby refineries we mentioned above by pipeline and can therefore provide them with crude oil supplies as well as storage and blending.

As part of the recently completed Motiva 325 Mb/d refinery expansion project, Sunoco built 2 MMBbl of crude storage for Shell and a new 30-inch connecting pipeline between Nederland and the refinery. The $10 B Motiva expansion project was delayed for 6 months by damage to the new crude distillation unit but is expected to come back online this week ( first week of December 2012) and increase the refinery capacity to 600 Mb/d.

Nothing But Good News Today

I've posted the IPs of the wells that have come off the confidential list today, as well as several other stories. Scroll down.

It appears to be a day of great news.

CLR hits TF3.

Global shale: challenged.

UND studying CO2 EOR for the Bakken.

Eagle Ford: The Most Profitable Oil Field In The World

I am Bakken-centric for blogging, but for investments ...

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Make no investment decisions based on what you read at the Million Dollar Way.

CarpeDiem.com: Eagle Ford -- the most profitable oil field in the world; dozens of "monster wells" producing up to 5,000 boepd

Very, Very Interesting: Global Gas Push Stalls -- WSJ

This is the front page story, above the fold, in the WSJ today:

Exporting the US shale energy revolution overseas turns out to be far tougher than anyone expected -- giving the US a significant competitive advantage.

Shale oil and natural gas have rejuvenated the North American energy industry and boosted the economy by supplying companies and consumers with cheap fuel. There are huge shale deposits outside of North America that global energy companies and governments are eager to tap.

But...

And that's where it gets interesting. The MDW has posted earlier stories that suggested all was not so rosy overseas.

Go to the link for the full story.

EOR - CO2 -- Bakken -- Being Studied

Link to The Bismarck Tribune.com.

It's hard to get a handle on the "official" estimates of original oil in place in the Bakken, but it appears that the "official" estimates have increased,

Link here to an earlier discussion of OOIP: about 150 billion bbls.

Now, in the story linked at the top of this post, it appears "they" have increased this estimate to 170 billion bbls.

These numbers (150 billion bbls and 170 billion bbls) are still significantly less than what Leigh Price originally suggested and what Harold Hamm appears to be suggesting.

Everyone agrees that with primary production, "we" are recovering somewhere between 2 percent and 8 percent of the OOIP in the Bakken Pool.

Harold Hamm has opined that as much as 24 billion bbls is recoverable from the Bakken Pool.

There are estimates that, before it's over, 50,000 wells will be drilled into the Bakken. The average EUR in the Bakken is estimated to be 500,000 bbls.

CLR Press Release: Successfully Completes TF3

This is the third bench of the Three Forks.

Continental Resources, Inc. (NYSE: CLR) announced today it successfully completed the Charlotte 3-22H (91% WI), the first horizontal well to test the third bench (TF3) of theThree Forks zone in the Bakken field of North Dakota and Montana. 

The Charlotte 3-22H flowed 953 barrels of oil equivalent per day (Boepd) at 1700 psi on a 28/64 choke in its initial one-day test period. Located in McKenzie County, North Dakota , it was drilled to a total depth of 21,324 feet, including a 9,701-foot lateral section, and was completed with Continental 's standard 30-stage fracture stimulation design.