Pending USGS Survey Of The Bakken / Three Forks -- June 16, 2018

Updates

June 16, 2018: the next USGS survey of the Bakken/Three Forks was scheduled for 2020. North Dakota congressional representatives successfully lobbied the USGS to begin the survey sooner. That was announced on December 11, 2017. This suggests to me that the USGS should begin the new survey not later than by the end of 2018. Let's hope.

June 16, 2018: "baseline." IP30 data and well metrics update -- economics of the average well -- from SeekingAlpha. 

Summary:

• IP30 trends (oil) are shown for 17 Bakken producers
• additional well metrics and info is provided for major producers
• early 2017 data are discussed
• required WTI prices for certain IRR and cash flow levels are specified.

IP30: average daily oil production of a well in its peak production month. It's usually express in bopd. Oil includes condensate. The IP30 month follow the completion month with a lag of one to severl months -- so, the correlation between both numbers isn't perfect.

The official NDIC (North Dakota Industrial Commission) database lists 71 operators having drilled horizontal wells in North Dakota's Bakken. The table below shows average IP30 values and the associated number of wells for all active companies which had at least 40 IP30 wells since the beginning of 2014 and 10 wells with IP30 in 2016. They represent 97% of all horizontal wells.

Data for seventeen producers: