Friday, January 4, 2013

179: Active Rigs in North Dakota, New Intra-Boom Low

7 comments:

  1. You have probably touched on this before-but I wonder how many are just west in Montana. Maybe a better measurement would be rig count in the ND and the adjacent Montana Bakken.

    Just guessing, but it might not be a true low if some are just west of the line.

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    1. You are correct. Some of these are just across the line and drilling is picking up on the Montana side of the state line, but I can't keep track of Montana very easily, so I will just leave it this way for now.

      Not concerned.

      Rig count is simply one data point. Total production is a more important data point.

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  2. According to the MonDak OilField ReView as of Jan. 4th there were 26 rigs active in the Montana portion of the Bakken. Also interesting is CLR has one rig working in Harding County South Dakota.

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    1. Thank you. I appreciate that. I knew folks were interesting in Harding County, but I had forgotten about CLR being there.

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  3. When rig count goes down so does production followed by a delay . Yes, if the rigs are still active in another state, then there is no change.
    You can't maintain or increase production when you are stacking rigs.

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    1. I can only talk about the Bakken.

      Of course what you say is incorrect, but we will see going forward.

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    2. The record number of rigs in the current boom was 218 back on May 29, 2012. The number dropped precipitously to 191 by August 22, 2012, and despite that drop, the production in North Dakota has increased every month.

      Not to say that will continue, but rig count alone is a single data point and does not correlate directly with production.

      When the boom started four, five, or six years ago, it took 45 to 60 days to drill a well. It is now down to 18 - 20 days for a rig to drill a well. Down time between wells has decreased significantly as we move to pad drilling. When the boom started, it was mostly short laterals and single stage fracks. Now, almost all long laterals and 30-stage fracks with significantly more production. And that's just a few data points why rig counts alone are irrelevant. And thanks to CHK, we now know where not to drill.

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