Enerplus Reports Two Huge Wells; CLR Reports A Nice Well -- March 13, 2020

Gas Buddy, Oklahoma City:

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$32.98	3/13/2020	03/13/2019	03/13/2018	03/13/2017	03/13/2016
Active Rigs	55	65	58	46	32

Three wells coming off the confidential list today -- Friday, March 13, 2020: 22 for the month; 193 for the quarter, 193 for the year:

• 35828, 448, CLR, Imsland 6-31H, Hamlet, t9/19; cum 56K 1/20; 33 stages; 5.9 million lbs;
• 35065, 520, Enerplus Map 152-94-33D-28H-TF1, Antelope, t9/19; cum 141K 1/20; F; 43 stages; 15.6 million lbs;
• 35062, 1,018, Enerplus, Leatherback 152-94-33C-28H, Antelope, t9/19; cum 116K 1/20; F; 42 stages; 10 million lbs;

RBN Energy: Oasis Midstream Partners' Bakken crude oil gathering systems.

The crude-oil price crash of the past couple of weeks is forcing producers in every U.S. shale play to reassess their drilling-and-completion plans for the balance of 2020. Still, while the pace of activity in the Permian, the Bakken and other major plays may slow somewhat in the coming months if crude prices stay low, the vast majority of the new wells that are drilled will need to be connected to crude gathering systems — ideally ones that offer producers and shippers a high degree of destination optionality. Today, we continue our series on crude-related assets in western North Dakota with a look at another leading midstreamer’s gathering system, and its link to the Dakota Access Pipeline and a nearby refinery.

It will probably be a while before all of us have a better sense of the range in which crude oil prices will settle. What we already know — and have known for some time now — is that the four North Dakota counties (McKenzie, Dunn, Mountrail and Williams) that account for nearly 90% of Bakken production offer producers some of the best, most productive rock in the U.S. We also know that there is a relatively strong relationship between crude oil prices and Bakken production. As we said in Part 1 of this blog series, the shale play’s output peaked at ~1.26 MMb/d  in December 2014, a few months after crude prices started tumbling, then bottomed out at ~960 Mb/d in December 2016, a few months after prices cratered. Since then, it’s been mostly up, up and up. By July 2018, Bakken production topped its December 2014 peak of ~1.26 MMb/d, then sped past 1.4 MMb/d in October 2018 and 1.5 MMb/d in October 2019. We mentioned in the same blog that there have been challenges to the Bakken rebound, including a shortfall in crude oil pipeline capacity out of the play — which was largely solved by the June 2017 startup of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) — and, more recently, the need for more gas processing capacity to handle the large volumes of associated gas emerging from Bakken wells with crude oil. Gas processing constraints are well on their way to being solved, thanks to the addition of a number of new processing plants in 2019 and early 2020, and the late-2019 startup of the Elk Creek NGL pipeline that will help folks deal with all the mixed NGLs coming out of those processing plants.

More at the link. Archived.