Some Fun With The Madison North-Northeast Of Minot -- March 7, 2016.

Disclaimer: in a long note like this there will be typographical and factual errors. I may be coming to or leading myself to conclusions that are completely wrong. I may be seeing things that don't exist. I am inappropriately exuberant about the Williston Basin. Do not make any financial, investing, or travel decisions based on what you read here. If this information is important to you, go to the source. This has not been triple-checked. There may be simple typographical errors that need to be fixed. Sometimes simple typographical errors result in huge errors.
Now to the post: 

Take a look at this stand-alone post first regarding the new Chatfield Madison wells.

While you're doing that, here's some background music, assuming your mobile device can multi-task:

Sweet Jane, Lou Reed   Also, scroll through some Madison wells at the "monster well" site.

With that background, I'm going to take a look at the early production of some of these "monster Madison" wells. When I did the first run, everything was done, of course, randomly. What I post below might have some cherry-picking (to make a point) but not much.

The Madison well and early production:

• Drilled back in 1953, #165, 645/PNA, Hess, Beaver Lodge-Madison Unit G-11, Beaver Lodge; t6/53; cum 1.02 million bbls;

MADISON	11-1953	9	2028	0	0	0	0	0
MADISON	10-1953	7	1425	0	0	0	0	0
MADISON	9-1953	8	1820	0	0	0	0	0
MADISON	8-1953	17	4528	0	0	0	0	0
MADISON	7-1953	9	1314	0	5	0	0	0
MADISON	6-1953	20	2993	0	15	0	0	0

• Drilled back in 1953, #345, 504/PNA, Hess, Tioga-Madison Unit L-144, Tioga, t8/53; cum 2.1 million bbls:

MADISON	1-1954	8	1644	0	332	0	0	0
MADISON	12-1953	7	1625	0	234	0	0	0
MADISON	11-1953	8	1731	0	303	0	0	0
MADISON	10-1953	11	2371	0	418	0	0	0
MADISON	9-1953	8	1735	0	0	0	0	0
MADISON	8-1953	8	1548	0	0	0	0	0

• Drilled back in 1958, #1824, 328/PA, Hess, Blue Buttes-Madison Unit L-306, t6/58; cum 1.01 million bbls 2/05:

MADISON	10-1958	8	592	0	25	0	0	0
MADISON	9-1958	6	717	0	7	0	0	0
MADISON	8-1958	13	1848	0	19	0	0	0
MADISON	7-1958	15	1974	0	0	0	0	0
MADISON	6-1958	5	925	0	19	0	0	0
MADISON	5-1958	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

• Drilled back in 1958, #1918, 187/PA, Hess, Blue Buttes-Madison Unit M-405, Madison, Blue Buttes, s7/58; t8/58; PNA 8/09; 1.28 million bbls:

MADISON	12-1958	13	1454	0	1354	0	0	0
MADISON	11-1958	12	1007	0	1136	0	0	0
MADISON	10-1958	10	589	0	691	0	0	0
MADISON	9-1958	7	842	0	1434	0	0	0
MADISON	8-1958	7	748	0	1275	0	0	0
MADISON	9-1956	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Okay, we'll quit there. There was no cherry-picking. I simply took the first four Madison wells with more than a million bo cumulative and then posted the first six months of production. In almost all cases, in general, subsequent production does not exceed initial production unless they go back in and "re-do" the well in some way.

There are exceptions. Look at the production profile in this well, in the first few years. The sundry forms in the well file are not helpful; there is no explanation why this well's production surged some months:

• Drilled back in 1977, #6165, 772, Petro-Hunt, Klatt 2-19-3D, Madison, Little Knife, t7/77; cum 1.50 million bbls 10/15:

MADISON	2-1979	16	5266	5296	0	6246	0	0
MADISON	1-1979	28	12536	12752	14	19487	0	0
MADISON	12-1978	29	10941	0	0	9514	0	0
MADISON	11-1978	26	14202	0	7	10868	10868	0
MADISON	10-1978	30	13351	0	1	12505	0	0
MADISON	9-1978	28	9276	0	1	11316	0	0
MADISON	8-1978	30	10978	0	0	9355	0	0
MADISON	7-1978	31	6253	0	26	5972	0	0
MADISON	6-1978	30	2794	0	30	2178	0	0
MADISON	5-1978	29	2831	0	31	2195	0	2126
MADISON	4-1978	7	2800	0	30	2181	0	0
MADISON	3-1978	10	3728	0	31	2895	0	0
MADISON	2-1978	9	4980	0	11	3849	0	3658
MADISON	1-1978	9	4709	0	31	3645	0	3576
MADISON	12-1977	10	5973	0	31	4643	0	4613
MADISON	11-1977	9	5803	0	30	4547	0	4520
MADISON	10-1977	12	6225	0	63	4846	0	4810
MADISON	9-1977	28	17754	0	30	13837	0	13743
MADISON	8-1977	28	12116	0	62	9496	0	9412
MADISON	7-1977	29	3848	0	0	2963	0	0
MADISON	6-1977	0	0	0	0	2568	0	2550

Now go back and look at the production profiles of the three new Chatfield Madison wells (the link again).

There are two points to make:

1. Those three new Chatfield Madison wells are producing at 5,000 bbls/month compared with less than 1,000 bbls/month for what became "monster wells" decades later, but there is a gotcha!

2. Even wells that produced 3,000 or 5,000 bbls/month early on could surprise us and go on and produced upwards of 15,000 bbls/month many months or years later. 

Remember, these Madison wells are a) shallow; and, b) not fracked. Shallow? Note that the new Chatfield Madison well reached TD in less than 5 days; 4,667 feet.

There was a third point I was going to make, but now I forgot it. Give me a minute.

Oh, yes, that was the third point: Madison wells are a) shallow; and, b) not fracked. 

Oh, yes, the gotcha: notice the number of days those early Madison wells were producing -- less than 10 days per month. The production for the new Chatfield Madison wells is for a full 30-day month.

Of course, I don't have an explanation for why those early Madison wells were on line for so few days when they were just starting out but the interesting thing is that when they went to a full 30 days production was not necessarily much better (at least in the half dozen or so wells I looked at). Could it have been due to takeaway capacity back in the 1950's? Was it due to regional refinery capacity? Too many things to think about. So many story lines.

But now that I've seen the early production numbers of these new Chatfield Madison wells and compare them to "monster Madison wells" it makes me think these may be monster wells some day in the future.