In June, the Montana Board of Oil and Gas Conservation approved a request by Slawson Exploration to make permanent a 640-acre spacing unit in Richland County for the production of oil and gas from what is believed to be the first well to produce oil and gas from the False Bakken.
The target formation of the Weasel 1-36H well is formally identified on the board’s online database as the Lodgepole formation, but Jim Halvorson, a petroleum geologist with the agency, told Petroleum News Bakken that the Weasel 1-36H is, in fact, a False Bakken well. The well is in the Elm Coulee field in western Richland County.
The single-lateral Weasel 1-36H has a total vertical depth of 9,566 feet and a measured depth of 13,834 feet, resulting in a lateral length of 4,268 feet into the False Bakken. The well began producing in August of 2012 and through April 30 has yielded a total of 12,946 barrels of oil over 219 days of production for a producing daily average of 59.11 barrels of oil per day, bopd. The well has also produced an average of 10 thousand cubic feet, mcf, of natural gas per day of production.
The False Bakken is an organic-rich limestone interval lying near the bottom of the Lodgepole formation along the southern fringe of the Bakken petroleum system in North Dakota and Montana. Drillers coined the term “False Bakken” because the interval can appear very similar to, and was sometimes initially confused with the upper Bakken member.
Fidelity’s UBS/FB well
While Slawson’s Weasel 1-36H is the first known False Bakken well, MDU Resources subsidiary Fidelity Exploration and Production drilled a well in southeastern Richland County in 2012 which it calls an “upper Bakken/False Bakken oil well,” because a portion of the bit path cut into the False Bakken. While most of the well’s lateral cut through the upper Bakken with a small portion of the path going through the Scallion member, the lateral finished in the False Bakken. The Scallion member is a thin limestone interval that separates the Lodgepole formation from the upper shale member of the Bakken formation.
Fidelity’s UBS/FB well, the Edam 15-22H, began producing in July 2012 and through May 2013 has been on production for 208 days and has yielded a total of 2,778 barrels of oil for an average daily production of 13.60 bopd. The Edam 15-22H has also produced a total of 115 mcf of natural gas for an average daily production of 0.55 mcf gas.
Upper shale activity continues
In addition to the False Bakken, both Slawson and Fidelity continue to explore and develop the upper Bakken member, which consists largely of shale, the most common petroleum source rock.
According to the Montana board’s records, Slawson had 15 wells producing from the upper Bakken as of May 2013 and Fidelity had four, all 19 in the Elm Coulee field in Richland County.
All of Slawson’s upper Bakken wells are single lateral wells except for one that is a dual-lateral with one sidetrack. The first of Slawson’s upper Bakken wells went on production in April 2012 and the most recent went on production in February 2013. Through May 2013, average daily production from those 15 wells ranged from 33.06 to 234.30 bopd. Collectively, Slawson’s upper Bakken wells have produced a total of 295,236 barrels of oil and 73.8 million cubic feet of gas over a total of 3,055 individual days of production for overall daily averages of 96.64 bopd and 24.16 mcf of natural gas. PetroShale (US) Inc. is a non-operating partner on some of Slawson’s upper Bakken wells, and Northern Oil and Gas Inc. is a non-operating partner on others.
Fidelity’s four upper Bakken wells went on production between September 2012 and April 2013. Average daily production from these four wells ranges from 20.67 to 121.46 bopd. Together the four wells have produced a total of 41,969 barrels of oil and 10.4 mmcf of natural gas over 632 individual producing days for collective daily averages of 66.41 bopd and 16.4 mcf of natural gas. PetroShale (US) is also a non-operating partner on some of Fidelity’s upper Bakken wells.
As Petroleum News Bakken reported in late June, Continental Resource filed applications with the North Dakota Industrial Commission seeking permission to drill wells in the upper Bakken in southeastern McKenzie County. In its application, Continental estimates ultimate recoveries of 246,000 barrels of oil and 323 mmcf of natural gas per well from its proposed upper Bakken wells.
Continental’s wells are proposed as single lateral wells located between the sections making up standup 1,280-acre spacing units with laterals extending approximately 4,400 feet north and south toward the tops and bottoms of the spacing units, although exact well locations could be altered due to topography.
