BAKKEN/THREE FORKS SHALE FOR NOW, BUST-TO-BOOM MENTALITY GRIPS WILLISTO BASIN

摘要

In keeping with agrarian counsel that holds one should "make hay while the sun shines," operators in the price-sensitive Bakken shale are pouncing on higher oil prices, abetted with near-inconsequential differentials, to lift production to a three-year high. Largely abandoned when crude prices cratered, with a low of 22 active rigs during the week of May 27,2016, the Bakken and similarly productive Three Forks shales are "back in-the-money," as Bloomberg reported on May 7, so much so that the "B" word has returned to the North Dakota conversation. "I suspect many of you have seen recent articles that say the Bakken is back, or the Bakken is booming again. Well, I couldn't agree more," Jack Stark, president of premier leaseholder Continental Resources, Inc., told analysts on May 3. "Bakken wells across the field are producing at unprecedented levels, uplifting the economics of the entire field."