Whiting Petroleum is moving into high gear on a resource-rich discovery in Colorado’s Niobrara shale play that’s said to contain more than twice the in-place oil per drilling spacing unit as North Dakota’s prolific Bakken petroleum system.
Whiting chief executive James Volker, in an April 7 keynote address to a meeting of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, IPAA, in New York, repeatedly touted the company’s Redtail prospect, even opening the luncheon presentation with a new video illustrating the technology that led to its discovery in Weld County northeast of Denver.
“Ladies and gentlemen, that was a true 3-D picture of the matrix of the Niobrara B formation,” Volker said, referring to it as “the so-called sweet spot out here in the Niobrara.”
“So, in the next five years, we’re really going to get after it,” he vowed.
Within the initial 2014-18 development timeframe, Volker added, Whiting plans to drill over 1,000 production wells, or roughly a third of some 3,300 drilling locations thus far identified on Whiting’s 120,000-acre Niobrara leasehold, situated in the Denver Julesburg Basin, in an area known as the Colorado Mineral Zone.From my perspective, the Niobrara has not lived up to the hype. Hopefully this time is different. I'm really looking for an exciting Niobrara play from Whiting.
And, again, a big "thank you" to the reader for sending the link.
The link was originally posted over at the discussion group.
By the way, I spoke on this very subject -- the Niobrara and the recent Whiting presentation just a few days ago when I blogged: 16 wells on a 960-acre drilling unit, and none of them will be dry.