The Williston Basin | April 2023

Field Overview

The Williston Basin is a large sedimentary basin along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains in western North Dakota, eastern Montana, and southern Saskatchewan, Can. The basin is characterized by thick sequences of sediments that underlie an area of about 110,000 square miles, and it is geologically closely related to the Alberta Basin in Canada. The first wells in the Williston were drilled in 1936, and by 1954, 80% of possible producing acreage had been leased.

State Drilling Statistics

Active Drilling Rigs in Basin – 38 (-3)
Total Rigs in North Dakota – 37 (-4)
Total Rigs in the United States- 720 (-11)
Total U.S. Rigs 1.0% YTD

Williston Top Producer

Top Producer – Continental Resources

Basin Highlights

Port: Sorry, But North Dakota’s Oil Industry Isn’t Just Interested in Recruiting White Ukrainians

A North Dakotan program called GROW, standing for Global Recruitment of Oilfield Workers, is an initiative sponsored by the North Dakota Petroleum Council and spearheaded by North Dakota Lieutenant Governor Brent Sanford, that focuses on bringing labor into the North Dakota oil fields. The group is looking to team with a federal program known as “United for Ukraine,” which seeks to match Ukrainian refugees with American employer-sponsors to bring them into the country. Other peoples are being actively recruited as well, including Kurds, Columbians, and Venezuelans.

Ovintiv – Williston Basin Disposition

Ovintiv announced on April 2 that it will be selling its 46,000 net acres in the Bakken to Grayson Mill Bakken, LLC, an EnCap company, for $825 million. The acreage produces 37 Mboed, 60% of which is liquids. This announcement was a footnote in a larger announcement that Ovintiv is purchasing 65,000 net acres in Martin and Andrews Counties in West Texas–acreage that is adjacent to their existing Permian Basin holdings. The Williston divestiture seems to be an effort to highgrade the Ovintiv portfolio and to offset some of the expense of picking up the Permian acreage.

Say You’ll Be There – Crude and Gas Reserves in Doubt

An investigation conducted by RB Energy concluded that the Bakken has just over 4,000 MMbbl of proved crude and condensate reserves left and about 120 Tcf of gas. At current drilling rates, the liquids reserves will last around 11 years and the gas reserves will last just under 10 years. The article continues to explain that there are plenty more hydrocarbon resources that will become “proved” reserves in coming years, but that tier-1 acreage in many of the major US basins is beginning to be exhausted, particularly in the Bakken.

Top Producers

Rig Count

North Dakota Oil Production

North Dakota Natural Gas

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