Back To Where It All Began -- The Bakken, EOG, And Parshall Oil Field -- January 1, 2017

Over the last couple of days I have been highlighting several EOG wells for various reasons. One thing I failed to notice, until today, is how close those wells are to the very first wells that EOG drilled in the Bakken that led to the boom starting the following year.

In the graphic below the production profile, the "discovery wells" are eight (8) miles southeast of recent EOG activity using significantly more sand and more stages to frack newer wells. Also, note again how far east these wells are. 

The two EOG wells that started it all:

• 16164, 463, EOG, Parshall 1-36H, "Bakken SS", 640-acre spacing; TD = 11,325; TD, 5/13/06; frack completed November 5, 2006; 4 stages; 238,620 lbs sand; t6/06; cum 220K 11/16;
• 16324, 883, EOG, Parshall 2-36H, "Bakken SS", 640-acre spacing, TD = 12,111, TVD = 9292; TD, on 9/13/06; perforated/fracked/completed March 26, 2007; t9/06; cum 360K 11/16;

16324, first year production profile (reminder: ceased drilling September, 2006; perfed/fracked/completed March, 2007):

BAKKEN	10-2007	31	7878	8323	65	2831	0	2800
BAKKEN	9-2007	30	8556	8018	71	3108	0	3078
BAKKEN	8-2007	31	9501	9613	84	3449	0	3418
BAKKEN	7-2007	31	10136	10162	84	3672	0	3641
BAKKEN	6-2007	18	5345	4962	44	1863	0	1846
BAKKEN	5-2007	31	9751	10301	80	3519	0	3488
BAKKEN	4-2007	28	10017	10166	83	3673	0	3645
BAKKEN	3-2007	17	5075	4789	42	1893	0	1877
BAKKEN	2-2007	28	9813	9811	81	3309	0	3281
BAKKEN	1-2007	26	7647	7449	45	2833	0	2809
BAKKEN	12-2006	16	3771	3891	3	1260	0	1245
BAKKEN	11-2006	30	8508	8681	7	2679	0	2649
BAKKEN	10-2006	29	13896	14101	14	3778	0	3749
BAKKEN	9-2006	2	3064	2025	5	280	0	278

The First Bakken Well

Updates

June 11, 2013: this website on the Bakken received an interesting comment today:

I came from Fargo to Tioga in 1952 to work for Christianson who built a lot of homes there. I bought a new 1952 Chevrolet from the car dealer in Tioga. I met the Iverson boys and their pretty sister. I was 17 years old. I remember Clarence would come into the bowling and pool hall in Tioga with ten $100 dollar bills pinned on his necktie. Harry Truman came to Tioga.

November 24, 2012: whenever I get comments like the first comment below, I feel very, very humbled.  I cannot express adequately the appreciation I have for folks who take the time to explain the Bakken, and correct my errors. I moved the comment up here because some folks may not read comments. My original post has some wrong information in it. I prefer not to change it, so I put lines through the major errors and refer the reader back to the comment:

The H.O. Bakken # l never produced oil from the "Bakken." The zone labeled Englewood was what we know today as the "Bakken." The Lyleton is today's "Three Forks." 

The Upper Devonian is now called the Duperow. The geologist's of 1952 thought the shale section at 9600 feet was much like the Englewood Shale of Alberta but they soon realized it was not the Englewood. 

The geologist at the H.O. Bakken simply put brackets around this section on the well log and for the  lack of a name simply wrote "Bakken." In later geologic discussions it became common for all geologists to refer to this zone as the "Bakken." The name stuck.  

Another distinction for the H.O. Bakken #1 was that it was the first well to produce oil from the Madison Formation. This zone had been overlooked in the Clarence Iverson discovery.  

The Bakken started to "unload oil and drilling mud" while the crew was pulling pipe to change bit. The well was then drill-stem tested and then it flowed oil to surface! That kicked off the major development of Madison fields along the Nesson Anticline in Williams, Mountrail and McKenzie Counties. The Madison was the primary  zone in the Tioga and Beaver Lodge Fields as well as many others. The deeper Duperow, Siluran, Interlake and Red River zones were found at the southern Beaver Lodge, Charlson, Blue Buttes fields, etc.

Original Post

From The Dickinson Press, November 24, 2012:

The Amerada Petroleum Co. began drilling the Henry O. Bakken well on July 13, 1951, and first encountered oil on Sept. 5 of that year, according to a program for an oil strike celebration the family held weeks later.

Production didn’t begin on the well until April 1952, according to the North Dakota Industrial Commission. Today, Bakken wells are drilled in less than a month.

“Back in those days, that was a huge undertaking, drilling to that depth,” Neset said.

The Henry O. Bakken well produced a total of 255,526 barrels of oil, which is a significant amount for a well that was drilled vertically, Neset said. She believes they must have encountered a naturally occurring fracture in the rock layer to get that much production.

Going to the NDIC website, this well now has a different name, the name provided at the time Amerada Hess elected to abandon it. I may have missed it, but I did not find the sundry form that documented the name change.

• 32, PA/217, Amerada Hess, Tioga-Madison Unit G-123/Henry O. Bakken No. 1, a Madison well, according to the site, s7/13/51, t4/16/52; cum 255,556 bbls, last produced August 1967; PNA in 1990;

Yes, only the 32nd North Dakota oil and gas permit. Officially it is described as a Madison well (the Charles formation, Mission Canyon, and Lodgepole).

Unless I missed it there was no "Bakken" formation identified. A handwritten stratigraphy profile:

• Lodgepole, 8,500
• Englewood, 9,615
• Lyleton, 9,750
• Upper Devonian, 9,910
• Devonian salt, 10,960
• Ashern, 11,500
• Stony Mountain, 12,450
• Red River, 12, 550
• Winnipeg Shale, 13,410
• Winnipeg Sand, 13,559
• Total depth, 13,709

The Upper Devonian would have been the upper Bakken, the Devovian salt the middle Bakken. See comment below and/or in the update.

The geographic location of permit #32:

• 1,985 feet FNL, 659 feet FWL, 12-157-95.

Northward Ho! -- Great Video of "Ideal" Bakken Rig -- Huge Overview of the Bakken, September, 2012

This story sent to me by a reader. It's an incredible story. It will be linked at the sidebar at the right.
Link here to a drillingcontractor.org article.

There is an incredible video at the very beginning -- the AC Ideal Rig -- a National Oilwell Varco (NOV) rig.  Coming into Williston from the west is the huge NOV complex. I always wondered what they did; now I know.

The video also explains why there are so many cranes in the Bakken and why Borsheim Crane Service has gotten so big in Williston.

BE SURE TO WATCH THE ANIMATION AT THE END of this video. Sons and daughters will want to grow up to be geologists, roughnecks, truck drivers, and LEGO modelers instead of policemen and firemen!

Some data points from the article:

• In 2011, 2,017 new wells were brought online in the Bakken, a number that will be eclipsed this year with the addition of 2,800 wells. “Brand-new wells are seeing initial production rates of 900 bbls/day,” ... 
• Often characterized as a “layer cake” with sometimes complicated geology and long, extended-reach laterals with measured well depths as long as 22,000 ft, the Bakken has served as a proving ground of sorts for rig designs and technology that take into account everything from the geology and well profiles to weather, manpower challenges and lack of infrastructure. 
• The company also has adopted a drilling wells on paper (DWOP) practice that breaks down the drilling operation into a series of processes, with rig crews focused on achieving the maximum technical limit for each stage. The program has resulted in a reduction of up to seven days in drilling time, ...
• But the play is just one of seven petroleum systems, or “pools,” that have been identified in the Williston Basin, suggesting “huge potential in upcoming years, much more than just the Bakken,” said Dr Steve Sonnenberg, professor of petroleum geology at the Colorado School of Mines and chair of the Bakken Research Consortium, a group of 35 companies researching the various aspects of the play. 
• Encompassing much of North Dakota, parts of South Dakota and Montana and extending into Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada, the Williston Basin was deposited in the late Devonian and early Mississippian periods. The basin also includes the shallower Tyler play, where the first horizontal test using Bakken drilling technology is planned for Q4 this year; the deeper Mission Canyon and Red River plays; Duperow; Winnipegosis and Winnipeg Group. 
• Operators also have conducted exploratory drilling in the Exshaw formation in northwestern Montana and Alberta, a region formed at the same time as the Williston Basin with very Bakken-like organic shale.

I will leave it at that, but the article is full of information about the Bakken boom. I'll find a place to link it on the sidebar at the right. It's that good.

When I read an article like this, it reminds me that the Bakken boom is not like any previous boom. The companies may be very, very competitive, and very, very secretive, but they are sharing "something" -- the Bakken Research Consortium and well as the UND geology folks (the geology school will soon have a new name, I think) are working behind the scenes to solve common problems. It really is very, very exciting. 

Early History of the Current Boom -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

The original intent of the "Million Dollar Way" was to help me understand the oil boom occurring in western North Dakota at the time (about 2007, when I started the original blog), and educate folks along the way.  I never intended to get into the investing aspects of the Bakken but it was impossible to separate out my original intent from financial activity, since dollars often quantified and/or clarified what was happening.

However, every once in awhile, I come across a great article or scientific study that fills in more of the puzzle.

This evening I came across an extremely well-written, informative article, from April, 2006, that provides details on the burgeoning boom back then.

I think newbies will enjoy this article. I found it fascinating.