Bakken shale

Two places that illustrate the mounting challenges facing the shale business are the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, where the number of working rigs is one-third what it was a year ago, and the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas, where there are no more working rigs.

A pilot project carried out by Hess demonstrates how quickly automated drilling technology is able to take a rig from the bottom of the pack in terms of performance and push it to the top.

The Bakken’s ultratight, largely oil-wet nature limits the potential of waterflooding. As an alternative, an optimally spaced well-to-well surfactant-flooding technology is proposed.

The Bakken Petroleum System, which includes the Bakken and Three Forks shales in North America, is estimated to hold as much as 900 billion bbl of original oil in place.

This paper evaluates dominant and currently applied completion methods by comparing wells in the Middle Bakken continuous resource play that have used all identified systems.

As shale operators look for ways to survive amid the current downturn in oil prices, accelerating the refracturing of older horizontal wells is turning into one of the most attractive options.

The ultimate performance of fractured wells in tight reservoirs is affected severely by the interfering effects inside the fracture and interfractures.

This article explores the outlook for the global market and gives insight into technology trends and the regions that hold the biggest opportunities for water treatment.

More than 21 billion bbl of light, sweet crude oil will be extracted over the lifetime of the Bakken and Three Forks shale plays, according to the latest projections from energy consultancy group Wood Mackenzie.

Production from the Bakken and Three Forks formations within the Williston basin is continuing to climb as a result of applied horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.