Hart Energy Publishing

Continental Completes ND Three Forks/Sanish Well, IPs At 995 BOE/d

Stephen Payne
August 6, 2009
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Continental Resources Inc., Houston, (NYSE: CLR) reports the successful completion of the Mathistad 2-35H (41% working interest) in McKenzie County, North Dakota.

The prospect is a companion well drilled to test the company’s belief the Middle Bakken and Three Forks/Sanish zones act as separate reservoirs in portions of the North Dakota shale play. The Mathistad 2-35H produced at an average 995 barrels of oil and gas per day during its initial seven-day test period, making it Continental’s strongest operated Middle Bakken completion to date in North Dakota.

            Continental chairman and chief executive Harold Hamm says. “The technical data from the Mathistad 2-35H supports our belief that the Middle Bakken and Three Forks/Sanish reservoirs are separate in this area of the play. The high initial productivity indicates that we tapped new, undrained reservoir rock as we fracture-stimulated the companion well.”

The well was drilled horizontally in the Middle Bakken zone approximately 50 feet above and essentially parallel to the horizontal of the Mathistad 1-35H. The Mathistad 2-35H was drilled on 1,280-acre spacing and fracture-stimulated in 14 stages, the company's standard design for North Dakota Bakken shale wells.

Continental completed Mathistad 1-35H in June 2008 in the Three Forks/Sanish zone. Prior to drilling the companion well, Continental shut in the Mathistad 1-35H and placed pressure gauges in its horizontal well bore. At the time it was shut in, the Mathistad 1-35H was on pump and producing 187 barrels equivalent per day. Consequently, the Mathistad 2-35H's initial flow rate was more than four times the rate at which the lower well had been pumping.

During the fracture-stimulation of the Mathistad 2-35H, pressure spikes were detected below, in the horizontal well bore of the Mathistad 1-35H.

Hamm says, “This was not surprising, given our placement of the Mathistad 2-35H horizontal only 50 feet above the lower Three Forks/Sanish well, the pressure depletion in the Three Forks/Sanish well bore area, and the high pressures involved in frac-stimulation. We set up 'worst case' conditions, with unrealistically tight spacing and aggressive pressures, to see if we could frac through the intervening shale layer into the lower horizontal well bore. Once the Mathistad 2-35's frac pressure subsided and it began flowing back, we clearly had production from untapped rock. We saw insignificant communication with the lower Three Forks/Sanish well."

Additional drilling will be required to establish the extent to which the reservoirs are separate across the play.

“While we are very encouraged, we are in the early stages of delineating the Bakken shale play, especially with regard to developing the Middle Bakken and the Three Forks/Sanish reservoirs separately. With these results, we believe the reserve potential of the Bakken play just went up.”

The Mathistad 2-35H test project was conducted in cooperation with the North Dakota Petroleum Council's Oil and Gas Research Program, which contributed funds to the project and will issue a public report on the project later this year.

Continental has operations in the Rockies, Midcontinent and Gulf Coast regions of the U.S.