Locator: 48706CLR.
Sent to me by a reader earlier today (actually yesterday). A huge thank-you to the reader. Very much appreciated.
Link here. Excerpts, much more at the link:
Continental Resources is exploring new Williston Basin formations for stimulated, horizontal potential with 2025-minted D&C recipes.
But which formations are being tested remains under wraps, for now. “I'm not going to tell you right now,” Continental President and CEO Doug Lawler said with a grin at Hart Energy’s SUPER DUG 2025 Conference & Expo.
Lawler did say the Bakken is “very similar to the Powder River [Basin], though.
There are a number of different stratigraphic intervals that have not been fully developed.” Harold Hamm, Continental’s founder, was asked in another session,
“Doug said this morning that y'all are looking at other Williston Basin formations … but he wouldn't tell us what those other ones are. Would you tell us?”
Three Forks 2, 3, and 4.
After proving up the Bakken in western North Dakota, Continental tested each of the four underlying benches of the super-tight Three Forks formation, beginning in 2012. Three Forks 1 worked with the drilling and completion (D&C) formula of the time and Continental added it to its well inventory. However, the lower three were increasingly less economic along the column.
Is there potential now to figure those out with the modern D&C recipe? Lawler said absolutely, adding: “At what point in time each of those could become potentially commercially viable? It's hard to tell there. There are different geologic attributes, water saturations and things that can potentially impact economics.”
Current OFS best practices are making the Bakken itself economic outside of what has been the Tier 1 heart of the play—fringe areas where the technology of the 2010s made it unprofitable, he added.
“There are many parts of the Bakken play that have not attracted investment … that 10 years ago we didn't think would ever get there. And today we're making wells in some of the poorer-quality rock that are equivalent or as good and just slightly better than some of the core Tier 1 acreage.”
