What Does This Tell Us About CLR? -- August 23, 2018

CLR reported this well today:

• 33230, 1,966, CLR, Vardon 4-14H, Siverston, 61 stages; 20 million lbs, t3/18; cum 132K 6/18; the Vardon wells are tracked here;

In its most recent corporate presentation, if I recall correctly, CLR's "optimized completion" strategy:

• 60 stages
• 10 - 15 million lbs proppant
• 250,000 lbs/stage - 167,000 lbs/stage

Generally, in the Bakken, I am seeing:

• long laterals (about 9,000 feet horizontal legs; 20,000 feet TD)
• most operators going with 40 stages
• about 175,000 lbs/stage (significantly less than what they are using in the Permian)
• most operators going with about 8 million lbs of proppant, trending toward 10 million lbs
• one operator says 
• under 7.5 million lbs proppant, sub-optimal results
• trending toward 15 million lbs proppant, no significant improvement
• "Goldlilocks" completion strategy: 60 stages; 12 million lbs proppant
• trending toward more use of "smaller" sand (three sizes: small, medium, large)
• middle Bakken requires 20% more sand than the Three Forks first bench
• CLR and one or two other operators starting to drill more T2 and T3 wells (second bench and third bench of the Three Forks)
• best Three Forks first bench wells might be better than best middle Bakken wells (Lynn Helms suggested this years ago; at the time, no information on second and third bench wells)

So, what does this tell us about the Bakken or about CLR when we see 20 million bbls of sand being used (by the way, EOG has also use this amount of sand in several cases -- they were the first to use that much sand in the Bakken, as far as I can tell, and that was some years ago) -- but I digress -- what does using 20 million lbs of sand mean?

• sand is incredibly inexpensive right now
• spending less on drilling can be used to spend more on fracking
• Harold Hamm's brother owns a fracking sand pit

By the way, what does the production profile look like for that most recent Vardon well? 122K in three months. 122K x $40 = $5 million. Average well cost to completion in the Bakken: they say $8 million.

33230:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	6-2018	15	9546	9337	10392	19604	14912	4549
BAKKEN	5-2018	31	37042	37505	34637	72096	70219	1877
BAKKEN	4-2018	30	41415	41026	45928	85214	56398	28816
BAKKEN	3-2018	26	42941	43156	50585	80980	44064	36916
BAKKEN	2-2018	10	1090	684	12931	3669	0	3669
BAKKEN	1-2018	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	12-2017	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	11-2017	4	59	59	0	0	0	0