Updates
March 27, 2013: Read the original post about Bakken Hunter aligning wells with natural gas pipelines. Unrelated, a reader sent me this:
[A local McKenzie County official] talked about how the rigs are going to move right down the section lines. He said it was battle between the geologists and the engineers. Geologists would put the rig in the middle of the section or where ever the “proper spot” was. Whereas the engineers looked for a logistically correct solution. Engineers won. As a result, the rigs will and wells will be in more of straight line versus all over the place. This makes it easier since less roads need to built, natural gas and oil pipelines are straightdown the field versus zig.This also explains the need for 2560-acre spacing.
Original Post
This is not trivial.
Petroleum News is reporting:
In February, Bakken Hunter, a subsidiary of Magnum Hunter, submitted applications to the North Dakota Industrial Commission requesting 13 new 640-acre spacing units and 10 new 1,280-spacing units in the Bounty School field where the company wants to drill up to eight wells on the 640-acre units and as many as 16 wells on the 1,280-acre units.
What is unique about the application is that Bakken Hunter has configured the multi-well pads to line up with Oneok’s Divide County east-west trending natural gas gathering pipelines.
The pads in the 640-acre spacing units would be at the top or the bottom of the spacing unit, but in the 1,280-acre units, the pad would be in the middle of the unit so as to line up with Oneok’s gathering lines.So, does this mean short laterals in 1280-acre spacing units?
In the same article, Petroleum News noted that Whiting was also taking action to eliminate flaring in its Lewis and Clark Three Forks play in Billings and Golden Valley counties. In this play, Whiting is minimizing flaring to 1%.