“This is an industry, not a boom.”
“It is going to last for a very long time!”
Million Dollar Way pointed out this great Powerpoint slide from Williston Economic Development on what’s going on in Bakken. Tom Rolfstad is the director.
If you are following the new frontier of energy on my blog, you will want to check out this presentation. It’s superb. Great points that are told without a speaker:
Rapid development to this point is to secure leases. Once there is a producing well, the lease in locked in for the life of the well. Those first leases need to be put in based on securing the lease, not efficiency or economy. Later, a bunch more wells, likely up to 14 per section can be drilled on an efficient and cost-effective basis. That means the current drilling has appeared to be chaotic. Future drilling will be much more orderly and at lower cost.
Great graphs of what the wells might look like on an entire township worth of land and what the wells on a 3×6 township area might look like.
Lots and lots and lots of fun aerial photos – 14 well pads, rail trans load facilities (crude-by-rail), natural gas plants, mega-yards to marshall the huge amounts of resources.
Slide 14 shows what the pad drilling concept looks like – 24 wells from 4 sites covers a huge area.
Slide 81 shows a 20 year project of employment. As drilling jobs slowly decline starting in about 5 years for the next 20, permanent jobs will grow to replace the drilling jobs. Total jobs will likely double of the next 15 years and then increase slowly for the next 15.