Charlson Oil Field

Originally posted February 16, 2010.

Charlson Field

Geologists, operators and drillers talk about targeting a certain formation, such as the Bakken or the Three Forks Sanish. However, when completed, the NDIC reports which pool the wells targeted which is an administrative term, and not a geologic formation term.

The NDIC administratively places all Bakken and all TFS wells in the "Bakken Pool." When the daily activity report states the "Bakken Pool" you cannot know from that which geologic formation was targeted; that information comes from other sources including press releases from the oil company operating the rig.

The "Bakken" formation is divided geologically into three formations, the Upper, the Middle, and the Lower. The Upper Bakken was the target during the 1990's boom; the Middle Bakken is the target now.

The Three Forks Sanish is divided into the Upper and the Lower. I forget, but I believe I first read it from an EOG conference call (it could have been Hess), the drillers in the current boom are targeting the Upper and the Lower Three Forks Sanish.

One can see the cumulative oil and gas production from HORIZONTAL wells by formation at the NDIC site. Click here and use the drop down menu to find the formation you are interested in.

That was all background to explain why I was interested in the Charlson field.

The Charlson field: 

My introduction to the Charlson occurred when I first became interested in Denbury.

The Charlson field is unique among many of the fields I follow because it appears that the formation being targeted in the current boom in the Charlson is almost exclusively the Three Forks Sanish.

The Charlson is a very small field, but historically, very, very active. It is only 48 sections, not even two full townships in size, but yet when you go to the GIS map server, it is so full of old vertical wells, it's hard to see "new" activity.

The Charlson is directly west of the Sanish oil field, on the other side of the river. There are no towns or hamlets in this small field.

Currently  there are 20 producing horizontal wells (and lots of vertical wells, as well as many abandoned wells), 8 wells on the confidential list, and one well being drilled.

But this is an interesting bit of trivia:

The most successful well to date in North Dakota sits in the Charlson: file #16059, the USA 2D-3-1H, a Petro-Hunt, LLC, well that was spudded in October, 2006. To date, it has produced 915,000 barrels of oil. That well targeted the Three Forks Sanish. [At $60/barrel = almost $55 million in about 3 years]. UPDATE: USA 2D-3-1H hit a record this past June, 2010: one million bbls of oil cumulative. 

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The Charlson Oil Field

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