Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Must Read: "Is Shale Oil Production from Bakken Headed for a Run with 'The Red Queen'?"

This is a great article with an in-depth time series analysis of Bakken wells in North Dakota. The author calls the Bakken a "Red Queen race" that requires many new wells to be drilled just to maintain production. These are the kew conclusions of the article,

  • The wells normally have a high production at start up that rapidly enters into steep declines. 
  • To facilitate growth in total production an accelerating number of wells needs to be brought into production. 
  • To sustain a plateau requires a continual addition of a high number of producing wells.
This is consistent with what I have seen with oil E&P in the Bakken. In fact, you could say that it is true at the company level as well as for the entire Bakken play.

The other thing I notice from the article and well decline charts is that the GMXR wells in the Bakken seem to be worse than competitors' wells.

No comments: