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A modified completion design used on wells at Whiting Petroleum’s Missouri Breaks prospect helped to more than double the company’s year-over-year production in the western Williston Basin. Moreover, the completion technique employed at Missouri Breaks utilizing cemented liners and higher sand volumes during stimulation fracturing likely can be adapted to other Whiting prospects in Williston Basin, the company indicated. “The other areas that we think it will have application … include Lewis & Clark, where we’ve got a very large drilling...
Openly frustrated with the time being taken by the Obama administration to decide on the future of Keystone XL, TransCanada is on the verge of some good news, indicating it is within days of finalizing agreements with prospective shippers for its Energy East project. Both are primarily designed as outlets for crude from the Alberta oil sands, but both could offer relief to Bakken producers in the United States and Canada who are hamstrung by the shortage of pipelines out of their region. While Keystone XL continues to stall and splutter,...
Due to a transition to pad drilling, Hess Corp.’s Bakken production remained relatively flat throughout the first half of 2013. However, with that transition now largely complete, North Dakota’s third largest oil producer is looking for an increase in its Bakken output throughout the remainder of the year, and the company is firmly within its overall Bakken production guidance range of 64,000 to 70,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. The company released its second quarter financial and production results on July 31. In the second qua...
Canada’s two big railroads and oil producers are pressing ahead with plans to increase the use steel-wheels-on-steel-rails to move crude even as the small Quebec town of Lac-Megantic reels from what can go wrong with a crude-laden train. Canadian Pacific Railway, despite four derailments of trains carrying oil or petroleum products this year, posted a record second-quarter profit, crediting long-haul oil shipments for much of the gain, while Canadian National Railway cited oil transport as a key to its profits for the quarter. But, a...
Marathon Oil and Gas and XTO Energy lead in spacing unit applications submitted to the North Dakota Industrial Commission for consideration during hearings scheduled for July 30 and 31. While most of the new spacing unit requests focused on Dunn and McKenzie counties, applications indicate new drilling activity is planned Billings, McLean, Burke and Divide counties, as well as some lesser activity in Mountrail and Williams counties. In Dunn County, Marathon and XTO, along with Hess Corp., collectively are requesting the creation of 15 new...
When Apache Corp. first announced its entry into the Bakken fringe on June 15, 2012, company vice president for exploration and new ventures, John Bedingfield, used a map (see adjacent to this story) that showed more than 60 drilling rigs “currently drilling” in Sheridan and Roosevelt counties, demonstrating that Bakken drilling was moving west in the direction of Apache’s new prospect. Those Montana counties border on northwestern North Dakota and are directly east and south and east, of Daniels County, Mont., where Apache had acquired 300,0...
The North Dakota Industrial Commission continues to receive infill drilling applications from Bakken operators. Leading in the number of infill wells proposed in filings on the commission’s July 30 and 31 hearing dockets is XTO Energy. The ExxonMobil subsidiary is seeking permission to drill, complete and produce up to a maximum of 328 wells on 33 separate spacing units, most of which are in McKenzie County. In the Siverston field in north-central McKenzie County, XTO is seeking permission to drill 10 wells on each of 30 1,280-acre standup s...
On July 31, the Minerals Management Division of the North Dakota Department of Trust Lands issued an update to the list of tracts to be offered in its Aug. 6 oil and gas lease auction now that other state agencies have finished reviewing all tracts on the list. Comments by those agencies are included on the updated list. One tract has been pulled from the list, that being lease 13-00620, which was an 80-acre tract in Golden Valley County. The Minerals Management Division has also updated the auction list to indicate any tracts on which oil or...
New regulations on moving crude by rail spawned by the Quebec derailment disaster, that Moody’s Investors Service fears could be a drag on the Bakken region in Montana, North Dakota, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, are starting to accumulate. “The Quebec derailment — likely North America’s worst rail accident since 1918 — will inevitably lead to increased U.S. and Canadian government scrutiny and permitting delays, along with higher costs for shipping,” the credit rating agency said in mid-July. Moody’s said that any slowdown in approving rai...
July was another busy month for the North Dakota Industrial Commission in terms of the number of applications it received from operators seeking permission to flare natural gas from oil wells beyond the 60 days of unrestricted production allowed under current NDIC field rules. The commission received applications from 10 operators in July to flare wells in Billings, Burke, Divide, McKenzie, Mountrail and Williams counties. Those applications are on the dockets for hearings scheduled for July 30 and 31. In June, 13 operators submitted...
Newfield Exploration Co., with numbers tallied and in the books for this year’s second quarter, is sounding more confident than ever of reaching a goal of doubling its U.S. production over three years. And for the second consecutive quarter this year, Newfield has increased its Williston Basin production guidance for full-year 2013. “Our operational successes in 2013 are helping to build momentum for 2014, and we are confident in our ability to deliver on our three-year plan,” said Lee K. Boothby, Newfield’s chairman, president and chief e...
Following 10 consecutive quarters of record domestic oil and gas production, Occidental Petroleum’s second quarter 2013 domestic production fell slightly to 470,000 barrels of oil per day, down 8,000 boepd from the 478,000 boepd the company reported for the first quarter. The 470,000 boepd second-quarter domestic production consisted of 261,000 barrels of oil per day (56 percent), 77,000 barrels of natural gas liquids per day (16 percent) and 792 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. The 478,000 boepd production in the first quarter consis...
Randy L. Limbacher, the new CEO, president and director of Samson Resources Corp., tapped Richard Fraley to serve as executive vice president and chief operating officer, and Louis Jones as executive vice president of business development, new ventures and portfolio management, effective July 26. Fraley, a former colleague of Limbacher at Burlington Resources, has more than 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. He most recently worked as a managing director for the Energy Mezzanine Opportunities Fund, focusing on upstream and...
The business community marked the passing of billionaire Texas oilman, real estate developer and philanthropist George Phydias Mitchell, noting his tremendous contributions to oil, gas and other industries. Mitchell died of natural causes while surrounded by family at his home in Galveston, Texas, July 26, according to a posting on the family foundation website. He was 94. Born on May 21, 1919, in Galveston, Mitchell graduated at the top of his class at Texas A&M University in 1940 and had been one of the school’s top benefactors. Mitchell, t...
Continental Resources Inc. CEO Harold Hamm will serve as honorary chairman of the 2014 re-election campaign of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, according to The Associated Press. Pruitt, a Republican elected to the post in 2010, kicked off his re-election bid by announcing July 29 that Hamm will head up his campaign. In 2012 Hamm served as chairman of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s energy policy advisory group. In May 2012, the oil executive held a Romney fundraiser at his house, which attracted about 750 people who c...
Abbreviations & parameters With a few exceptions, the Montana weekly oil activity report includes horizontal well activity in the Bakken petroleum system in the eastern/northeastern part of the state within the Williston Basin. It also includes the Heath play and what is referred to as the South Alberta Bakken fairway in northwestern/west-central Montana, which is at least 175 miles long (north-south) and 50 miles wide (east-west), extending from southern Alberta, where the formation is generally referred to as the Exshaw, southwards through...
Statoil again topped the list of companies with the highest initial production, or IP, rates in the latest week reported for both completed wells and wells released from confidential status. Again, it was with a Beaux well in the prolific Banks field in McKenzie County. The Beaux 18-19 3TFH yielded an impressive 3,375 barrels in its first 24 hours of production. The previous week Statoil’s Beaux 18-19 4H well set a North Dakota IP rate record for a well producing from the Bakken petroleum system at a hefty 5,387 barrels. And the week before tha...
Subscribers: To view the "North Dakota oil permit activity" chart, please visit the above PDF link....
Subscribers: To view the "IPs for North Dakota Bakken wells" chart, please visit the above PDF link....
Subscribers: To view the "Montana Bakken oil production by company" chart, please visit the above PDF link....
Ebeltoft . Sickler . Lawyers consist of nine lawyers serving Bakken-based businesses in North Dakota and Montana. Practice groups provide legal expertise for: corporate due-diligence, merger, acquisition and business sale negotiation and completion, and leasing, purchase or sale of real estate and developer contracts, appearances for planning and zoning and litigation relating to governmental decisions, and environmental claims litigation. Nathan Bouray, Secretary Nathan Bouray focuses his practice on real estate, oil and gas, and probate...
Lynden International, a full-service freight forwarding and logistics company, has launched a newly designed website at www.lynden.com/lint. The expanded and enhanced site was created by Lynden’s marketing team to update and improve content and make navigation easier for new and current customers. “We spent more than a year researching and fine-tuning the changes,” said Marketing & Sales Support Director Dorene Kolb. “Our goal was to make it easier for customers to find us online and then to find what they need on our site within two clicks...
Enstar Natural Gas Co. has asked the Regulatory Commission of Alaska to approve a new gas supply contract with Cook Inlet gas producer Hilcorp Alaska. The new contract, which runs from April 1, 2014, to March 31, 2018, will ensure that Enstar can meet all of its customers’ gas supply needs through to the first quarter of 2018, Enstar has told the commission. With declining gas production from aging Cook Inlet gas fields, Enstar and other Southcentral gas and power utilities had been considering importing natural gas into the region within the n...
Eni Petroleum is expanding its operations at its Nikaitchuq unit. The Italian major is evaluating a previously undeveloped oil-bearing interval at the North Slope field in the waters of Harrison Bay, as well as multilateral completion techniques. When Eni sanctioned Nikaitchuq in early 2008, the company based its development entirely on the oil contained in the OA sands of the Schrader Bluff formation. But Eni suggested it might someday pursue the shallower N sands of the same formation, or a minor oil accumulation encountered in the deeper...
Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell’s open-ANWR strategy isn’t working, at least not so far. The Obama administration has again turned back a Parnell proposal to conduct exploratory activity on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Republican governor had submitted, on July 9, an application to the Interior Department for a “special use permit” allowing the state to conduct 3-D seismic surveys across the coastal plain from 2014 to 2017. On July 26, the governor’s office released a July 23 rejection letter from Geoffrey Haskett,...
