American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2017 - 82

ConventionCoverage: North Dakota Petroleum Council

Sharing their thoughts on the future of EOR in the Bakken Shale during an opening
session panel discussion were, from left, Lynn Helms, director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources; Chris Wright, chief executive officer of Liberty Oilﬁeld
Services; and John Harju, vice president for strategic partnerships at the University of
North Dakota's Energy & Environmental Research Center, who moderated.

production grows only slightly during the
next five years from its current level of
1.1 MMbbl/d under case two, but reaches
nearly 1.5 MMbbl/d under case one. However, he showed, by 2035, North Dakota
oil production reaches 2.0 MMbbl/d under
the case one assumptions and grows to
more than 1.6 MMbbl/d under case two.
Cost efficiencies will help drive Bakken
production going forward, attested Chris
Wright, chief executive officer of Liberty
Oilfield Services and executive chairman
of Liberty Resources. "From 2012 to
2017, our cost to produce a barrel of oil
in the Bakken dropped 65 percent," he

told NDPC.
"Our expected rate of return from
drilling wells is 30-50 percent higher
today at $50 oil than it was three years
ago at $90 oil," Wright revealed. "Yes,
oil prices are low and that has a negative
impact, but I think the speed of technology
and innovation is running even faster."
Bakken EOR
Enhanced oil recovery also will play
a role, for which Bakken development
patterns are ideally suited, suggested
Lynn Helms, director of the North Dakota
Industrial Commission's Department of

LEFT: NDPC President Ron Ness (left) and Chairman Eric Dillé
(right) present the association's 2017 Distinguished Service Award
to Brent Eslinger, senior district manager for Halliburton's Williston
District, during NDPC's annual meeting, Sept. 26-28 in Grand Forks,

82 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

Mineral Resources.
He recalled that the commission decided in 2010 the Bakken should be developed on north-south spacing with twomile-long laterals. "We were thinking in
terms of correlative rights and increased
density drilling, but ultimately it set the
Bakken in an almost ideal world for
EOR," Helms contended. "New wellbores
can be added parallel to the existing wellbores in those spacing units."
At that time, he added, DMR calculated
the industry might recover 1-2 percent of
150 billion barrels in place. Today's thinking, he said, is that the Bakken has 300
billion barrels in place with 20 billion
recoverable "if all you do is drill more
holes and fracture them to the depths of
today's technology."
One fly in the Bakken EOR ointment,
Helms allowed, is enhanced recovery
fluid. "Laboratory and field tests show
that produced water doesn't enhance
Bakken oil recovery," he said. "The next
thought was carbon dioxide, but until
the coal industry is able to economically
produce CO2 and provide it to operators,
we will have very limited CO2 resources."
What North Dakota does have, Helms
said, is an overabundance of ethane,
propane and butanes in its produced gas.
"Experiments at the University of North
Dakota's Energy & Environmental Research Center have shown that mixtures
of those fluids are even better than CO2
at oil recovery," he pointed out.
Wright agreed that "ethane is a tremendous fluid for miscibility with oil," and
added, "I am quite confident something

N.D. RIGHT: NDPC 2017 Hall of Fame inductee Craig Smith (third
from left) is surrounded by former Hall of Fame recipients (from
left) Rick Ross (2014), Wayne Biberdorf (2009), Jeff Herman (2007),
Kathy Neset (2015), John Morrison (2006) and Al Anderson (2016).
American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2017

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