Mid-Con Energy Partners LP (NASDAQ: MCEP) announced July 24 it’s buying mature properties in Northeastern Oklahoma for $56.5 million.

Company subsidiary Mid-Con Energy III LLC de-risked the century-old oilfield over a period of more than a year.

In the transaction, Dallas' Mid-Con entered into a definitive agreement with Mid-Con Energy III to acquire the Oilton Field, a mature asset producing from a large anticline structure underlying acreage in Creek County, Okla.

Since the second quarter of 2013, the field has been owned and operated by its subsidiary. The company’s operating team executed a development program comprised of redevelopment and recompletion work focused on returning Arbuckle wells to production. The company also initiated a waterflood plan targeting the Red Fork interval.

The company has seen an estimated 30% increase in gross production to date.

Discovered in 1913, Oilton has produced more than 35 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMboe), primarily from the Arbuckle, Wilcox and Bartlesville Formations. Mid-Con Energy Partners is buying operatorship in the field along with an estimated 97% net working interest. The company will gain net proved reserves of 2.6 MMboe, as of July 1, acquired at around $21.55/bbl.

"Oilton serves as a textbook example of the strategic advantage our private and public vehicles collectively provide," said Jeff Olmstead, Mid-Con Energy Partners’ president and CFO, in a statement.

When Mid-Con Energy Partners acquired Oilton into its private affiliate in 2013, the development risk was too high for the publicly traded upstream MLP, Olmstead said.

"Over the past 14 months, our development activities have yielded favorable results, effectively de-risking the asset," he said. "Today, we are in the advantaged position of acquiring a highly MLP-appropriate asset that we know well."

The field has a reserve-to-production ratio of roughly 17.5 years, with average net production of 410 boe/d in second-quarter 2014. Production is sold into the Cushing, Okla. market. The underlying decline rate of the field is projected to average 16% over the next three years. Lease operating expenses are forecasted to average $15/bbl over the next three years.

The acquisition, expected to close and become effective on Aug. 5, will be funded with about 2.2 million units of Mid-Con Energy Partners' stock and $4.5 million in cash.