Bakken Explorers 2015: A family tradition

Slawson carries a long and rich history of exploration in the Bakken

Maxine Herr

Petroleum News Bakken

Slawson Exploration Co. seems to always know how to make money in the hunt for oil. In fact, exploration in the Williston Basin could be considered synonymous with the Slawson name. The Kansas-based private, family-owned company is an industry leader with a reputation of great success while facing tough challenges. As rigs migrate from the fringe areas of the Bakken to better producing core areas, Slawson finds itself in a coveted position with several rigs in southwest Mountrail County.

As of March, the company had more than 100 wells on confidential status in the Big Bend and Van Hooks fields, according to the state’s Department of Mineral Resources data. But Slawson’s activity covers an array of oil fields in western North Dakota counties including McKenzie, Dunn, Divide and Billings. In addition to exploring and developing the middle Bakken dolomite, Slawson Exploration has explored other formations in the Williston Basin including the upper Bakken shale and the False Bakken. The False Bakken is an organic-rich limestone interval in the Lodgepole formation overlying the upper Bakken shale that can appear very similar to the upper shale, hence the name “False” Bakken. When operators began horizontal drilling, the False Bakken became the point at which to start the curve transitioning from vertical to horizontal to drill into the middle Bakken.

But the formation was more than just a stratigraphic marker for Slawson. The company is believed to be the first and only operator to successfully drill and complete a producing well in the False Bakken, as it did it in eastern Montana where the company is an active operator. Its Weasel 1-36H False Bakken well in the Elm Coulee field in Richland County began producing in August of 2012 and as of January 2015 had produced 22,637 barrels of oil over 790 days, averaging 64 barrels of oil per day, according to data from the Montana Board of Oil and Gas Conservation.

A first for the Bakken

Slawson Exploration marks 40 years of drilling for oil in the Williston Basin having drilled its first well in the region in 1975. It also holds the distinction of being the only early operator remaining in the Bakken since the onset of horizontal drilling more than 25 years ago. In 1989, Slawson spud its first horizontal well, the Sidewinder 1-7H and reached new heights with its initial production rate. Never had a Bakken well exceeded 1,000 barrels of initial production, but in February 1990 when the Sidewinder went on production, the well produced 1,362 barrels in the first 24 hours. North Dakota’s oil production at the time was a mere drop in the bucket to the nearly 1.2 million barrels per day the state is averaging today, but in November 1989 - a month before the Sidewinder was spud - the state produced just over 7,500 barrels per day. So an IP of 1,362 barrels was big news.

Only a few years prior, Slawson was struggling to survive, having sold almost the entire company to Vintage Petroleum during the price collapse of the mid-1980s. Slawson was founded in 1957 by geologist Donald C. Slawson in Wichita, Kansas. His sons Todd, Craig and Steve eventually led the company. So in the 1980s, brothers Todd and Craig set out to explore the Williston Basin, and eventually the Sidewinder and other wells began successfully hitting numerous fractures in the upper Bakken shale.

“We were not drilling the middle Bakken (dolomite) but rather the Bakken shale itself,” Todd Slawson told Petroleum News Bakken in the fall of 2014. “Meridian (Oil and Gas) and Slawson were drilling for fractures in an area known for brittleness, thus the high initial production rates were the result of hitting them.”

Finding partners

With Slawson’s reputation, finding partners comes easy. Australia-based Samson Oil & Gas Ltd. formed a joint venture with Slawson in 2013 to advance its plan for full-field development in the North Stockyard project in Williams County. But no operator is immune to sliding commodity markets, so Slawson has laid down its drilling rig in the area due to the weak oil prices. The infill development plan for North Stockyard includes eight middle Bakken wells and nine of 22 Three Forks wells that have been drilled. Eight of the nine Three Forks wells are targeting the first bench and the remaining well targets the second bench. Given the slowdown in development, 13 wells will remained undrilled until prices rebound.

Calgary-based PetroShale has also formed a non-operating partnership with Slawson and the company said it allows PetroShale to identify new opportunities to quickly grow in the Bakken.

“Slawson is known as an innovator and fast follower with extremely efficient operations,” PetroShale says on its website.

That “innovator”-type thinking attracted North Dakota LNG, a subsidiary of Watford City-based Prairie Cos., which said in May 2014 that it would open a liquefied natural gas production facility near Tioga. It named Slawson as the first to utilize the service to fuel its six operated rigs in the Williston Basin.

Carrying on the business

The Slawson family has a rich history in the Bakken, one that perhaps the patriarch fully expected when he left Rocky Mountain operations to his sons some 25 years ago. “He basically gave us free rein to do what we wanted as long as we could find partners,” Craig Slawson said. While Craig left the company to form his own exploration and production company in 2014, his brothers remain with the family company where Todd serves as president and Steve oversees operations in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Their father passed away in 2014 at the age of 80.

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