Missouri Ridge Field Update -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Missouri Ridge oil field is exactly 3 sections. About as small as a field can be, although there are some one-section fields in North Dakota.

Missouri Ridge is about 5 miles north of Williston. It currently (August, 2011) has one long lateral Bakken well running through it.

It caught my attention because there seems to be a group of old wells in that very small field, about half of which are still active; the other half now abandoned.

Here is how much oil has been taken out of those three sections by formation:

• Missouri Ridge-Bakken: 79,000 bbls
• Missouri Ridge- Birdbear: 1,248,034 bbls (yup, million)
• Missouri Ridge-Madison: 464,857 bbls
• Missouri Ridge-Red River: 1,274,334 bbls (yup, million)
• Missouri Ridge-Stonewall: 738,000

That adds up to more than 3.8 million bbls and counting, in this small (3-section) field. As noted, there is only one Bakken well there now, and we know that conservatively there will be 2 wells/640 acres and as many as 4 (some places even more).

At $50/bbl, that represents $190 million. For three sections (1,920 acres). And they say the Bakken is many times better than these other formations. Hmmm. Just the other day a privately-held Canadian company bought an undisclosed number of acres from Anschutz for $115 million. Something tells me it was appreciably more than 3 sections. [Back of the envelope calculations, at $1,500/acre --> 7,500 acres.]