Newfield Exploration’s claim to Bakken explorer status in the Williston Basin is due, first, to its testing of the lower benches of the Three Forks formation within the Bakken petroleum system and, second, to its strides in the application of technology to increase recoveries of oil in place in both the upper Three Forks and middle Bakken members.
The Woodlands, Texas-based independent has been able to accomplish the second while simultaneously lowering its finding and development costs and reducing its surface impacts.
Because of stellar output from new wells, along with better-than-expected performance from existing wells, Newfield said April 24 that it decided to increase 2013 production estimates for the Williston, where the company is running four drilling rigs.
“We now expect our Williston production to grow 25 percent year-over-year compared to our original target of about 15 percent,” Lee K. Boothby, Newfield’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, said in the first-quarter conference call.
He said Newfield also expects Williston production to grow about 25 percent year-over-year again in 2014.
The company produced about 9,800 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the first quarter compared to around 8,000 boe a day for the same period in 2012, a nearly 23 percent quarter-over-quarter increase.
11,000-foot laterals
“In the Williston Basin, we delivered some of our best wells to date during the first quarter,” Boothby said, assigning credit in large part to increased lateral lengths of about 11,000 feet, along with a reduction in average days to full depth, which was 45 days in 2010, 35 days in 2011, and 25 days in 2012.
During third quarter 2012, a “best-in-class” well was drilled and cased in 18 days, Newfield said.
In its 2012 third-quarter conference call Newfield said completed well costs would continue to reflect efficiency gains, estimating that its 2013 wells could be drilled and completed for about $10 million gross.
In the first quarter 2013 average well costs were $9.8 million, but a well completed in the second quarter was drilled and completed for $8.3 million.
Additional resource potential exists in “deeper benches” of the Three Forks and infill drilling and field testing is under way, the results of which “will be used to plan a future program to exploit the prospective Three Forks-Sanish formation,” which presumably includes the Pronghorn member that is now considered the lowest subdivision of the Bakken formation, a sandstone that was formerly called the Sanish.
The Pronghorn lies above the Three Forks.
In its reports to investors, Newfield also said it was running pilots to determine optimal well spacing in the Bakken system.
With a 2013 capital budget of $230 million for the Williston Basin, Newfield expects to drill about 35 operated wells in the middle Bakken and seven wells in the upper Three Forks this year.
With about 96,000 net acres and an inventory of more than 300 ready-to-drill locations in the Bakken and Three Forks formations.
