COP On The Bakken -- Seeking Alpha -- April 8, 2015

Just a sample from the Seeking Alpha article:

So that concludes our section on the Eagle Ford we still have the best position in the play and we're certainly one of the most effective operators in the play. And those same characteristics apply to our Bakken position we are in the highest value part of the play in the Bakken top on the Nesson Anticline. We're developing the Bakken at the moment on 320 acre spacing in the Middle Bakken and Upper Three Forks which results in 160 acre combined spacing we just have most of the operators in the Bakken talk about their spacing.

Now like the Eagle Ford we have a lot of capital flexibility in the Bakken and we're exercising that flexibility we're going drop down to an average of five operated rigs this year. In fact we'll get as a low as three operated rigs by the middle of the year. And then we'll ramp-up to 10 rigs by 2017 and that results in 20% increase in Bakken production between 2014 and 2017. And that level of capital activity with our 600 million barrel resource base we've got at least 10 years of drilling inventory to continue development of the Bakken.

And like the Eagle Ford we're continuing to focus on capital efficiency. And in fact since 2011 we've dropped our well costs drilling costs by 40% and our unit completion cost by 50%. And we're still on that learning curve as you can see on the right hand side here. And one of the reasons that we’re continuing to see this learning curve and cost benefit is because most of our wells now are drilled from multi-well pads. In fact in 2015 90% of our wells will be drilled from multi-well pads.

And then continuing:

So I think you can see from Matt is just showing that we’re continuing to deliver cost efficiencies in the Bakken as well. But we're not stopping there with just the cost efficiencies we're also continuing to work on the science the technical side with our unconventional reservoir models to continue to enhance those and our field pilot testing. So I'm going to talk about that a little bit next.

As Matt mentioned as shown on the left hand side of the different well configurations if you look at our Middle Bakken and our Upper Three Forks development together on a combined basis we're on 160 acre spacing. But our reservoir models are telling us that they'd be a benefit to go to tighter spacing. So it is what we expect from our models. And so we're testing that now we actually have different pilot tests looking at different spacings those are shown by the five red dots on the map each of those tests. Looking at different spacings to test what our models are telling us we don’t have definitive results yet from those tests so we are continuing to drill our 160 acre spacing until we have that.

Another kind of pilot testing that we're doing is looking at developing the Middle Three Forks that lowest zone in separately. So we have two pilots shown by the grey dots here on the map that are testing independent development of the Middle Three Forks. Now we also have in the Middle Three Forks a single well that we drilled earlier that we've got some early results from that are pretty promising. So I will show you those next this was a well that was drilled near the crest of the Nesson Anticline and you’d see the results in the graphic on the middle. In this case our Middle Three Forks production actually is quite similar to typical Upper Three Forks production that we've been getting on our acreage. So that’s a real potential resource upside for us if we can make this work over a broader area so these pilots are starting to look at how broader an area can we get these kind of results out of the Middle Three Forks. And ultimately that will allow us to evaluate a multi-layer development of this area along the lines of what you see on the left hand side in terms of the well configuration.

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This was Bloomberg's take on the presentation: COP bets the farm on shale. 

ConocoPhillips, one of the world’s largest shale producers, sees crude prices rising by the end of the year, bolstering the company’s growing wager on U.S. oil. Chief Executive Officer Ryan Lance is staking a big part of the company’s future on shale, pledging to spend 50 percent more over the next three years primarily in the U.S. and Canada even as crude prices fell by more than half.

ConocoPhillips joins Exxon Mobil Corp. in making wells from Texas to North Dakota a central focus as oil companies adapt to market conditions that require the ability to ramp up or cut back drilling swiftly.

Relying on flexible, low-cost opportunities that can stop and start on a dime will be critical as U.S. drillers become the world’s swing suppliers, Lance said Wednesday in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters office in New York.

“This is my fifth rodeo,” Lance said of his previous experience with energy downturns. “We’re going into a world that’s going to be characterized by lower, gradually rising prices and a lot of volatility.”

The shift for ConocoPhillips away from billion-dollar projects that take years or decades to complete is rooted in a belief that crude prices could gyrate wildly for years to come. Any price recovery in the near term will be modest, he said, as slowing U.S. production helps push up prices to between $70 and $80 a barrel within three years.

In the Bakken, COP operates as Burlington Resources.