Only One Well Came Off The Confidential List Today

The results have been posted.

• 22513, 699, Hess, BL-Amelia 156-95-1415H-1, Beaver Lodge; t12/12; cum 35K 2/13;

Hess has really had some great wells recently.

Back to the future. This well is in the oldest oil field in North Dakota, I believe, the Beaver Lodge. (There may be older fields, but this is associated with the discovery well in the state.)

A couple things to note: the well was tested December 30, 2012, and is already on a pump, something recently discussed.

The second thing to note: the company I associate most with natural gas in North Dakota is Hess. So here we have Hess operating in the oldest field in North Dakota, which must be criss-crossed with more miles of pipe than anywhere in the state, and at the end of February, 2013, when latest data available, the well was still flaring 100% of the natural gas it produced.

It was off-line for ten days in February, so that's when the pump was probably put in and maybe the natural gas line being brought up to the well pad.

The Amelia well is sited in an interesting location. Although it is in the Beaver Lodge, it is not located in the area where the wells are densest. This is the only Bakken well in the immediate area. Considering that we will eventually see as many as 4 or even 8 wells in each section, it just shows how much more work is yet to be done. Being this far away from where most of the activity in the Beaver Lodge is explains the delay in getting hooked up to a natural gas pipeline.

Another point of interest. Just a mile to the southwest is another lone Hess Bakken well:

• 16617, 38, Hess, BL-Heen-156-95-2227H-1, Beaver Lodge, t10/07; cum 22K 2/13; producing about 350 bbls of oil per month. Folks will ask how these wells can be economical. I don't know if they are, but they will hold the spacing unit lease as long as it is producing. Interestingly, whatever decline this well had from its initial production, it level off quickly and has remained steady since 2008. According to the NDIC website, this well never flared any natural gas; it was collected and sold starting the very first month and it, too, was away from the main area of the Beaver Lodge field.

I was surprised to see that the Beaver Lodge is almost all 1280-acre spacing.

It is also interesting to scroll through the history of Hess in the Bakken.