Burke County May Be The Edge of The Bakken to the Northeast -- January 6, 2013

A reader alerted me to the story.

Burke County is a fairly huge county. Bowbells, the city prominently featured in the linked story, is in the northeast quadrant of Burke County.

The Director, NDIC, hinted that one operator had acquired a fair amount of acreage in Burke County and might be preparing to "give it back." Three operators come to mind: CLR, Oasis, and OXY. The Director mentions Hess and MRO doing some work in Burke County suggesting that Burke County might be at the edge of the Bakken, but when one does a "well search" one does not see a huge presence of Hess or MRO wells in Burke County.

Of the other other three operators (CLR, Oasis, and OXY), OXY has a huge presence in Dimond oil field. This has always been an unimpressive field but I thought it was due more to OXY's fracking results than the geology. It looks like it was the geology, according to Lynn Helms.

Oasis has a large presence in Cottonwood oil field in Burke County; it's not a great field, but it's not terribly bad. Cottonwood field is closer to the better Bakken, whereas Dimond oil field is significantly farther away.

Again, "well search" doesn't result in many CLR wells in Burke County. And when you look at Filloon's CLR map one doesn't see much CLR acreage in Burke County though the size of the map makes it somewhat difficult to tell for sure.

Putting all this together, if I were a betting man, and I'm not, except for an occasional hamburger, I would bet the OXY USA is ready to give back some of its Burke County acreage.

So, we'll see.

Just one problem. This was the quote from the story:

“One larger operator took a fairly big position in northeast Burke County,” said Lynn Helms, director of the state Department of Mineral Resources.
“It’s been disappointing.
“Now they’re thinking they may let some leases go.”

Dimond field is east of the Cottonwood, and Dimond field is more east-central Burke County, and not northeast Burke County, as Lynn Helms said. But the problem is that northeast of Dimond field there is not enough public information known (or at least known by me) to figure out what other operator might have leases in northeastern Burke County. Despite this, I will stick with OXY.