Answering A Reader's Question Regarding Kraken Exiting Mountrail County -- February 3, 2022

Kraken is tracked here.  

Whiting is tracked here. 

This post refers only to Kraken's operations in North Dakota. For Kraken's operations in Montana, see this post.

From today's daily activity report, previously posted:

Approximately 80 wells transferred from Kraken to Whiting; these are all in T152N-92W; T153N-92W; T154N-92W;  T154N-91W; some in abutting areas; familiar family names include but not limited to:

• Fladeland;
• Domaskin:
• Bigfoot;
• Double Eagle;
• Kokomo;

See comment at that post:

• So Kraken is exiting Mountrail completely or just partially? Where's your guess on their area of focus?

My reply:

Wow, wow, wow. That's an interesting question. That will take me down a rabbit hole that will take some time to sort out. I will come back to this. It's going to be made more difficult by the fact that the NDIC database is still not current. But give me a day or two and I will post something on this. This should be fun.

The short answer: without doing any work on this, my hunch: Kraken is going to focus on Williams County. 

Here's that rabbit hole.

1. All of those wells are in the Sanish oil field, and can be found here: oil search / NDIC.  

Kraken has 94 locations in the Sanish. Subtract out the "PNC" locations and six IA/AB/EXP locations and one ends up with 76 wells, incredibly close to the "approximate 80" wells I suggested.

2. Whiting, offshore-technology.com, July 22, 2021, just seven months ago:

• Whiting announces acquisition deal
• $271 million
• to acquire from an undisclosed company (which almost always means privately held)
• Whiting to acquire:
• 8,752 net acres
• net daily production: 4,200 boepd
• includes five gross / 2.3 net drilled and uncompleted wells;
• includes 61 gross / 395 undrilled locations in Mountrail County
• key to this rabbit hole: "Whiting Petroleum said that these assets adjoin and complement its existing operations in the Sanish field.”

3. So, we have the first part of the rabbit hole. The Kraken wells in the Sanish were acquired by Whiting.

4. Now, the second part: to answer the question asked by the reader:

So Kraken is exiting Mountrail completely or just partially? Where's your guess on their area of focus?

5. This answer is slightly difficult because it's always possible Kraken is preparing to exit the Bakken entirely. But I seriously doubt that for several reasons, which are irrelevant for purpose of this discussion.

6. Let's assume, and I'm sure this is 99.99999% likely, that Kraken is staying in the Bakken. The question from the reader is where will Kraken focus? This would be relatively easy to answer if the NDIC data was current, but it is not. But we have an even better source: the daily activity reports which lists all newly issued permits.

7. The NDIC data base only has the Kraken wells in the Sanish oil field. NDIC is still updating their database as they migrate to a new service provider. This has been going on since last July, but I digress.

8. I went through every permit issued from full calendar year 2018 through today: four full years and the first six weeks of 2022, and every one of those permits is in Williams County, almost all of them northeast and east of Williston. I will provide a list of the specific oil fields later, but I'm burned out for the moment on this one.

9. That answers the question: Kraken will be focused on Bakken assets in Williams County. 

10. And, oh by the way, Kraken is reporting some incredible wells. 

11. One last question: how much did Whiting pay for these mineral acres on a "per acre" and/or "per boepd" basis? Back-of-the-envelope:

• $271 million / 8,752 net acres = $31,000 / acre
• $271 million / 4,200 boepd = $64,000 / boepd
• I do believe this sets an all-time record for both metrics
• Note: I often make simple arithmetic errors.