Grayson Mill Taking Action On A Lousy Five-Well Pad Northeast Of Williston -- February 9, 2022

This is pretty cool for some mom-and-pop mineral owners. 

This well is absolutely lousy, but it might be getting better:

•  31699, 133, Grayson Mill/Equinor, Shorty 4-9F 4TFH, Stony Creek, t3/18; cum 62K 12/21;

Full production can be found here. 

This well is on a five-well pad northeast of Williston. For a big company like Equinor, this pad was easily forgotten / ignored. But now, Equinor has sold its Bakken assets to Grayson Mill. Whether Grayson Mill plans to grow in the Bakken over the long term or whether Grayson Mill is looking to see what they might have before "flipping" their Bakken assets will only be known over time.

But it certainly looks like they went back to this pad and said, "we can do better." Look how much better this well is doing. The other four wells on this five-well pad also seem much improved. 

So, again, no big deal but nice for mom-and-pop mineral owners in this area. 

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The Book Page

Again, if interested in origin of solar system, earth, fossil fuel, origin of life, this is currently the best new book on the market right now for armchair/amateur biologists, geologists, fossil fuel aficionados. 

• How The Mountains Grew
• John Dvorak
• c. 2021
• Pegasus Books, August 2021

If I were introducing students to this subject, I would present this as a 15-minute introductory "lecture." One of the things that frustrated me most in college was that professors seemed not to put things in context when first introducing the subject. Then during the four-month course, professors could have really improved things by going back over what had been covered, and where the subject was headed.

I've never been able to follow the early history of the earth. But here is my understanding. Over time, this will be edited and updated, but it's how I now understand the early earth.

Geologic history: there are four eons --

• Phanerzoic: "visible life"
  
• Proterozoic: first life
• Archean: "the beginning"; the formation of earth, no life (?)
• Hadean: "the unseen"; the formation of the solar system; CAIs.

Rocks and formations:

CAIs: when looking for the oldest rocks in the solar system (earth and the Moon), scientists are looking for calcium-aluminum inclusions. 

Although called rocks, they are minute (a mm or smaller in size) embedded in other rocks; but when one finds a CAI -- a calcium-aluminum inclusion -- one is in the Hadean 

Hadean: birth of the solar system, 4.568 billion years ago, Hadean:

• oldest CAIs: 4.568 billion years ago, and the age of the Solar System
• oldest lunar rock is only a bit younger than 4.568 billion years old
• Hadean eon: birth and development of the Solar System

Archean: formation, development, and final form of Earth

• first Earth: all water, no land;
• controversies still continue how Earth became a "water-planet"
• how Earth became a "water-planet" seems to be the first big unsolved mystery
• the second big unsolved mystery: how land first appeared out of the water
• but land did arise: 4.030 billion years ago
• theories exist to explain first land; all theories attempt to explain "the Super Event"
• "Super Event": formation of continental crust; land
• for the "Super Event" to occur, it required enormous amounts of water
• water + mantle led to granite-like molten rock that solidified into much of the continental crust we see today -- molten granite that solidified; two oldest famous granite rocks: gneiss -- the Acasta Geniss, 4,030 billion year ago;
• one-half of all the continental crust we see today appeared at that time
• so, if the Hadean, was the birth and development of the Solar System, the Archean was the birth and development of Earth
• by the end of the Archean Eon, the Earth was pretty much just as it is today with regard to water and crust
• the tectonic plates were yet to become active and the land masses were not yet in their current configuration
• we now have the third big unsolved mystery: the impact of Theia, which occurred shortly into the Archean Eon
• "First Snowball Earth" was the end of the Archean Eon

Proterozoic:

• coming out of First Snowball Earth, first signs of life identified
• but, for the most part, almost nothing
• life appeared about this time, 2.1 billion years ago: the simple, and very, very small Grypania
• and then nothing for one billion years years; nothing from 2.1 billion years ago to 1.1 billion years ago
• geologists call this "the Boring Billion" -- nothing happened as far as life was concerned
• then, everything died out again
• the Proterozoic was on the precipice of history, life, but then everything died out
• the Proterozoic ended with the "Second Snowball Earth"; 541 million years ago;

Phanerzoic: the age of "visible" life

• first eon with eras:
• Paleozoic Era: old life
• Mesozoic Era: middle life
• Cenozoic Era: modern life
• coming out of the "Second Snowball Earth," life exploded
• the famous Burgess Shale; and the Cambrian.
• the Phanerzoic begins with the explosion of life in the Cambrian
• the Phanerzoic ends with the "Great Dying", the Permian
• in between the Cambrian and the Permian
• Ordovician:
• Silurian: preamble to the next period
• Devonian: the Age of Fish
• Carboniferous: coal
• the Great Dying, the Permian, ends the Paleozoic Era
• the next era: the Mesozoic Era, the Age of Dinosaurs

One last item regarding the eons:

• proposal: new eon and redefine current "early": eons
• new eon: the Chaotian eon, proto-earth
• the eon of CAIs
• starts with first CAIs
• ends with impact of Theia
• Hadean eon, Ur-earth
• begins when earth begins to evolve after impact of Theia
• ends with present size / present mass of earth
• Hadean as an eon is secure
• end of Hadean remains: earliest known crustal rock
• Acasta Gneiss

The Land Masses

Supercontinents

• the landmasses, the supercontinents, the earth as it is today

Cratons:

There were three supercontinents:

• to be defined as a supercontinent, the landmass must contain all (or nearly all) landmasses on earth in one large super-mass or supercontinent
• as big as Gwondana was, it was not a supercontinent
• the first thing to do is try to associate the time periods of the supercontinents 
• only three supercontinents
  
• Colombia
• Rodinia: Russian "to begat"
• Pangea

The Super Event: created first land masses; accounted for about half of all land mass we see today

• The Super Event -- 2.7 billion years ago
• Colombia: 1.8 bya
• Rodinia 1.1 bya
• [Gondwana: 0.6 bya]
• Pangea: 0.3 bya

The "Boring Billion": approximately 2.1 bya to 1.1 bya

• so, in fact, the Boring Billion overlapped with the supercontinent Colombia
• Colombia / Rodinia one large supercontinent 
• even as Rodinia was coming together it was breaking apart
  
• land masses that big (for reasons explained elsewhere) are dry, hot deserts -- not favorable for life
• when Rodinia broke up, the landmasses being much smaller were wet, humid and bacteria began to proliferate
• bacteria resulted in atmospheric CO2 dropping, and the planet cooling
• during Rodinia, the CO2 dropped so severely, the planet froze, and we had the Second Snowball Earth
• life dies, CO2 rose; earth became warm again; glaciers receded
• the breakup of Rodinia -- through cold and hot cycles -- finally life began again
• Rodinia "begat" life on earth again; the "Boring Billion" comes to an end

The Proterozoic begins and ends with "Snowball Earth" (first and second snowball earth)

• Colombia
• Rodinia

So, earlier we had three big unsolved questions:

• how Earth came to become a "water-planet"
• the Super Event: what was the event that created upwards of 50% of all continental crust that we exists today;
• the impact of Theia

We're up to the end of the Proterozoic -- in fact, we are still in the Proterozoic but near the very end, just before the Cambrian.

Ediacara.