East Fork Oil Field Has Been Updated -- The Bakken, The Williston Basin, North Dakota, USA

The East Fork oil field has been updated.

I was going to update the "Epping-Ray corridor" but looking at the NDIC GIS map, it appeared the East Fork oil field might be more interesting. I was not disappointed.

Back in September, 2011, BEXP announced a record TFS well in this field at the time it was drilled:

• 20640, 2,597, BEXP, Irgens 27-34 2H, Three Forks well, t9/11; cum 103K 11/12

This is an area in which Newfield had a lot of acreage at one time but sold to CLR; in addition, BTA held some acreage here which they sold to KOG.

The wells are  phenomenal. Willistonites have driven by this field innumerable times on their way to Minot; the field is about 10 miles west of Ray. US Highway 2 borders it on the north.

The East Fork field is just northwest of the very interesting CLR Brooklyn field which still has three rigs working it. 

There is still a lot of flaring in this field; even where wells are hooked up to natural gas lines, it appears there is not enough capacity to handle all the natural gas from this field.

There are two rigs sited in this field at the moment. Petro-Hunt is drilling (#22719) and a BEXP rig is on the southern edge, but the well will go south into Stony Creek oil field. It looks like, with the exception of two or sections, every section is held by production. There is certainly no urgency to drill this field; the players know what they have; the leases are held by production; and, they need to get natural gas pipelines in before drilling more. Speaking of which, let's check the Brooklyn oil field for flaring. Nope: even the most recent wells are not flaring; CLR has natural gas pipelines in. That explains part of the reason that CLR can afford three rigs in this field; nothing is being wasted. Very, very interested.

When you go to the link (the East Fork field), note:

• the huge IPs for KOG and BEXP
• the number of Three Forks wells (along with the middle Bakken, of course)
•  the number of wells that will produce in excess of 100K bbls of oil in the first year or so
• 21 permits in 2012 in this field, but 2 canceled
• 22 permits in 2011, but 3 canceled
• only one permit issued for this field in 2010; that well was drilled late last year and will exceed 100,000 boe in the first year;
• so, all these wells have been drilled in the past two years; and there are still 19 wells on the confidential list in this field

Also: note that there are a lot of old and several active vertical Madison wells on 160-acre spacing. For example, this one is still active, having produced more than 365K bbls to date, and it's only been producing for 26 years, so it still has another 20 years of useful life:

• 11949, 408, Citation, Christopherson 14-30, East Fork, Madison, s4/86; t5/86; cum 364,510 10/11