Joe: I thought you said you were seeing 10% recovery rates in the Bakken. Do I remember that correctly?
It all depends on what area of the field you are in since the Bakken varies widely through out the region.
The New Town/Parshall area has a higher yield and recovery rate because of the nature of the porosity of the formation there. It is also one of the thickest production zones found in the entire field to date.
It is still difficult to determine however, because most wells start off with a good flow, but fall off sharply according to what the recovery rate will allow. Fracking and other metods are still being tried to see which works best, but the entire field is still too unproven to gather any solid data either way.
There is a vast discrepancy on estimates of the field’s total volume and recoverable oil because of the lack of historical data. The zone being produced currently has not had enough drilling activity yet, to give those statistical results.
There is a great potential, but there still lacks the number of rigs needed to open the leases, which will give better statistical results.
Also, your post about the Albertal Oil Sands was not the original argument. it was first discussed about “Canadian Oil Shale’s.” The Alberta Oil sands is a different subject entirely. In fact, Sand and Siltstones in the Bakken is what make it producible using horizontal drilling methods.
So, believe me, don’t take me for some idiot who does not know what he is talking about. I’ll exchange technical data with anybody in that respect. My area of expertise deals with Horizontal drilling methods as well as production methods in the region.
But that is mostly in Elm Coulee, and although I have done nearly 50 wells there (in that field), they have been for one company only.
Other areas and operators may not fare so well, (The one I work for is having good results in ND, too, and I have worked some of those wells as well). Some will do better, and a lot depends on the steering, production strategy, and even drilling fluid, and the frack.
So, overall, the numbers may be less.
Also, there was a flurry of horizontal drilling in the Bakken shale (not the middle Bakken) in the '80s, and many of those wells did not even reach payout. It turns out source rock does not make such good reservoir if it is not heavily fractured, at least in this case.
Doubtless, that induced some 'once burned, twice shy' skepticism in this play, and I do not know if those wells are being included when people are talking about overall recovery from the Bakken Formation if they have not specified recovery from the Middle Bakken. After all, the Shale member(s) is/are part of it, too.