Poll Suggested By A Reader: Who Do You Think Sold 17,000 Acres To Whiting?

Updates

Later, 6:21 pm: see first comment. We are being told it was Petro-Hunt, LLC, that was the seller. That certainly fits. I completely forgot about Petro-Hunt; my bad. They were involved in the Halcon deal last October.  

So, everyone should just ignore the post below.

Original Post

Disclaimer: this is simply pure speculation. A reader asked me an opinion, and like Roger Rabbit, I can't resist. This is nothing more than idle chatter on a Wednesday afternoon. Don't take any more than that from it. In fact, as more data rolls in, I might change my mind.
 
Awhile back there was a news story or a press release or a rumor or a friend of a friend who had a cousin that worked in a bar in Williston who heard that Zenergy was shopping some of their Bakken assets.

With regard to the deal announced yesterday, that Whiting had announced it was going to purchase about 17,000 net acres in the Bakken: I had not thought of doing this but someone asked the question: who do you think the seller was?

Whiting provided a very detailed location of their newly acquired acreage with a map at the link to their press release (which can be found at that link).

So, going to the NDIC GIS map server and zooming in on the area long the North Dakota/Montana border, on both sides of the river, but more to the southeast of the river, one comes up with a lot of short horizontal wells. Remember, Whiting said the area "includes 13 operated 1,280-acre Bakken/Three Forks drilling spacing units." To me, "13 operated units" suggests 13 active wells. I wasn't in the mood to count the wells, so I picked a centrally-located township -- 151-104 -- and then (later) went to NDIC's well-search page, and submitted "Zenergy" and then scrolled down to that area (151-104). Wow, Zenergy has a lot of permits in that area.

When one zooms in on the GIS map server in this area -- and again, I wasn't in the mood to spend much time on it, so I only did it once -- the first well I hit was an old Zavanna well. The next well was a Statoil well. So, I thought it was Zavanna. But then I remembered that Zenergy story at the very first link above, so I clicked on a third well. Lo and behold, it was a Zenergy well.

That's when I went to the NDIC well-search page to see if there were enough Zenergy wells in the area to total at least 13. Way more.

The original story suggested Zenergy might have a billion dollar deal, but this Whiting deal was for only $260 million, a far cry from a billion. But if Zenergy was having difficulty selling all its property maybe this was the best they could do for now.

A billion dollars is a pretty good deal, so one would assume that the seller had some good property.

Just for the fun of it. In this area:

• 22991, 1,056, Zenergy, Reidle 18-7HTF, Nohly Lake, t5/13; cum 7K:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	6-2013	24	4000	3540	10256	2267	2039	120
BAKKEN	5-2013	25	5111	5037	18233	4153	1086	2954
BAKKEN	4-2013	5	470	0	4777	398	0

 You know, Whiting likes the Three Forks.