In developing this month’s cover story, “Emerging Oil,” several additional horizontal plays may be on the horizon for the Lower 48, from the plains of eastern Colorado to the piney forests of the Florida Panhandle. Some ideas seem to have needed just a lateral and a frac job. Some have been emerging for several years and are still on the cusp. Others may be merely a twinkle in the drillbit just yet. Here are a dozen.

Three Forks 3-North Dakota. Continental Resources Inc. has results from its first test of the Three Forks 3 bench. The Charlotte 3-22H flowed 953 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), mostly oil, per day in its first 15 days online from 30 frac stages in a 9,701-foot lateral. Fourteen more wells are planned for this year. Further findings may show the equivalent of a fourth Bakken-type play in the Williston Basin, although areal extent of each deeper Three Forks bench may be smaller.

Three Forks 4-North Dakota. Continental plans to test the fourth Three Forks bench this year. Six cores the company pulled in 2011 to the bottom of the TF across a 115-mile-wide area indicated oil saturation in all four TF layers.

Barnett Shale-Permian Basin, Texas. The shale—long known as productive in the Fort Worth Basin—has been tapped by Apache Corp. for oil in Glasscock County. A test, Anderson 26-8H, of the Mississippian-age Barnett had peak initial production of 385 barrels of oil and 600,000 cubic feet of gas per day from a 4,500-foot lateral stimulated in 14 frac stages.

Wichita - Albany Group-Permian Basin, Texas. Apache has also made wells in this limestone-mix rock at some 7,000 feet on the Central Basin Platform in Andrews County. One, Three Bar SU 101H, made a 30-day average of 919 BOE a day, mostly oil; the other, Three Bar SU 105H, averaged 979 BOE a day.

Lower Cline-Permian Basin, Texas. In Glasscock County, Apache tested the Pennsylvanian-age Lower Cline shale, which sits below Upper Cline and the bottom of the Wolfcamp, at its Barracuda 45-2H. The well posted a 30-day average of 663 BOE a day, mostly oil, from a 3,800-foot lateral treated in 11 frac stages.

Mississippi Lime-Kansas and Nebraska. The company has also put together some 580,000 net acres in northern Kansas and southern Nebraska. Its planned activity could extend the Mississippi Lime oil play far north of current development in northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas.

Cherokee and Upper Penn-Kansas and Nebraska. In that same leasehold, Apache will look at the Cherokee and Upper Penn, which have produced oil in the past from vertical wellbores.

A-1 Carbonate-Michigan. Devon Energy Corp. included a try-out of this rock in its year-old, five-play joint-venture deal with Sinopec Corp. Results from a first test haven’t been conclusive. The JV is structured, however, so that Sinopec’s $2.2-billion buy-in will be spent on the plays that prove in time to merit more capex attention, such as the Tuscaloosa Marine shale.

Collingwood Shale-Michigan. Encana Corp. plans to look at how the Collingwood—which underlies the Utica shale—might produce from a horizontal wellbore. Devon plans a horizontal and a vertical test this year.

Marmaton/Atoka-Colorado. Southwestern Energy Co. is looking at this Pennsylvanian-age carbonate and shale in Colorado’s D-J Basin at depths between 8,000 and 10,500 feet. Thickness ranges from 300 to 750 feet. Two tests, Staner 5-58 1-8 and Ewertz Farms 1-58 1-26, are being evaluated. Additional wells are planned this year for its 300,000 net acres.

Heath Shale-Montana. Fidelity E&P Co.’s Schmidt 44-27H flowed 447 barrels of oil, some associated gas, and 870 barrels of water a day from Heath in Rosebud County at 5,000 feet from a 5,200-foot lateral. In all, Fidelity has tested five Heath wells to date and reports encouraging results from four.

Smackover-Alabama and Florida. Production from horizontal wells in this deep reservoir may be a ways off, but not because it is a challenging rock. Instead, permeability is high enough to allow economic vertical wells. Some short horizontals were tried a few years ago in the Florida Panhandle, with mixed results. Of course, the price of oil had fallen below $40 at the time.