Some Sixty Rigs Are Drilling For North Dakota’s Bakken
I just returned from a field trip to the Williston Basin to visit the Bakken play. This is a major resource play in a complex shale reservoir that contains interbedded sands, dolomites and limstones. Operators are using horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracture stimulations to make some exceptional oil wells.
The extent of the Bakken play is phenomenal– we drove many miles across North Dakota’s rolling prairie, from Williston to Watford City down to Killdeer, and then from Williston out to Stanley and down toward New Town. And that was just a slice.
Big triple rigs punctuate the broad blue-white skies. The play is booming: wells are being drilled and fractured, tanks are being set, gas plants are under construction and pipelines are being laid. Yet, the wide spacing of the big horizontal wells–they stretch up to 9,000 feet laterally at vertical depths of some 10,000 feet–means that the activity is in the background.
North Dakota remains serene. I’m happy to report that sunrise this morning was truly stunning.
–by Peggy Williams, Senior Exploration Editor, Oil and Gas Investor
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June 27th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
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