My Inappropriate Exuberance Regarding The Bakken Has Not Abated -- April 11, 2019

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.

Disclaimer: I am inappropriately exuberant with regard to the Bakken.

Disclaimer: when it comes to the Bakken, I sometimes think I live in an echo chamber.

Disclaimer: connecting the dots below; there will be factual and typographical errors; personal comments and opinions will be interspersed with data points from other sources.

From the NOG presentation:

• nothing new here, NOG repeats the current EUR from the Bakken: 7.4 billion bbls
• another decade of drilling based on current data
• 7.4 billion bbls recoverable oil
• 1.4 million bopd crude oil (not boe)
• 14.5 years 

EOR, Bloomberg:

• tight oil goal: move primary recovery from 10% to 20%
• that's a huge goal -- doubling primary recovery from 10% to 20%
• the original Bakken wells had EURs of 350,000 bbls crude oil; now, the expectation is for new wells to have EURs of 1 million bbls crude oil
•  North Dakota legislature, oil industry already beginning to address issues of CO2 storage, injection
• conventional oil: 50% primary recovery

Original Leigh Price paper:

• 500 billion bbls original oil in place (OOIP)

Primary recovery in the Bakken:

• early on in the Bakken boom: 1 - 3% recovery 
• currently: some think we may be nearing 20% from primary recovery in the newer wells in the Bakken

USGS survey of the Bakken: promised a long time ago; still waiting for it

• when we get it, it will include the middle Bakken and the first bench of the Three Forks
• will not include the lower benches of the Three Forks
• will double the recoverable reserves from the previous report

NDIC map:

• currently the NDIC map includes one "page" -- the entire state of North Dakota
• the next iteration, the NDIC will have four pages or more: one page for each of the four main counties and a map each for the southwestern counties and the northwestern counties

Bakken strengths:

• small geographic area
• infrastructure in place; already good, getting better
• huge microseismic array; at one time, the world's largest such array
• good relationship among all players