Nine (9) New Permits -- The Bakken, Williston Basin, North Dakota, USA; Hess Reports Completion Of Five Producing Wells

Updates

December 29, 2013: in the original post I note that Chesapeake has finally made it official -- abandoning one of its wells. After posting that, a reader sent me this:

All of their wells are plugged except for the Hutzenbiler well, which they apparently sold to Williston Exploration.  W.E. has a sign at the entrance.  I live in the area and have been to all of the wells.  W.E. also is on the January hearing to set up spacing for a vertical Tyler well off of this pad.

This confirms, January, 2014, NDIC dockets:

• 21608, Williston Exploration, establish a 160-acre unit, a vertical well, Tyler, Stark

Original Post

 

Active rigs: this is really quite surprising -- considering how much more effective the "new" rigs are, multi-pad drilling, blah, blah, blah, "192" today certainly "exceeds" 199 two years ago.

	12/20/2013	12/20/2012	12/20/2011	12/20/2010	12/20/2009
Active Rigs	192	186	199	164	79

Nine (9) new permits -- 

• Operators: Hess (4), Whiting (2), Enduro, Slawon, Ballard Petroleum
• Fields: Manitou (Mountrail), Little Deep Creek (Renville), Big Bend (Mountrail), Parshall (Mountrail)
• Comments: Ballard has a permit for a wildcat in Bottineau County (Spearfish well)

Wells coming off the confidential list were posted earlier; see sidebar at the right.

Permit renewed:

• 24650, conf, KOG, P Wood 154-98-3-27-16-3H, Truax

Permit canceled:

• 26501, PNC, CLR, Vachal 7-27H1, Alkali Creek,
• 26500, PNC, CLR, Vachal 6-27H1, Alkali Creek,

Five (5) producing wells completed:

• 25060, 599, Hess, AN-Mogen Trust-153-94-3229H-1, Antelope, Sanish pool, t11/13; cum --
• 25061, 1,432, Hess, AN-Prosser-152-95-0211H-4, Antelope, Sanish pool, t12/13; cum --
• 25225, 814, Hess, BW-Sorenson 149-99-1342H-2, Cherry Creek, t11/13; cum --
• 25285, 991, Hess, SC-Barney 154-98-1819H-4, Truax, t11/13; cum --
• 25462, 1,155, Hess, EN-Leo 154-94-2324-1, Alkali Creek, t11/13; cum --

Finally, it's official, Chespeake has abandoned this well:

• 21143, AB, Chesapeake, Schoch 21-137-97 A 1H, Three Forks, wildcat

And, finally, Chesapeake tells us this hole is dry:

• 21135, DRY, Chesapeake, Decker 26-138-97 A 1H, Three Forks, wildcat; completed 10/17/2013 -- I guess someone just forgot about sending in the report. It's hard to say it was "dry" -- they reached total depth, but never fracked it. Samples were very poor, so unlikely to be economic; they cut their losses.

 Better late than never, I guess.