After years of speculation and exploration, North Dakota state geologists are urging companies to take another look at a sizable pool of untapped oil reserves discovered deep under a section of the high-yielding Bakken oil field. State officials announced the find in a news release touting that “hundreds of millions of barrels of undeveloped recoverable petroleum” was documented by state experts in 2024 in northwestern North Dakota.
Study results indicate that developing the middle Three Forks reservoir, when sufficiently charged with oil, will add on the order of 1-2 million barrels of additional recoverable oil per 1280-acre drilling spacing unit. The development of the initial prospective area of northeastern McKenzie County is estimated to require the drilling and completion of more than 600 additional middle Three Forks wells, which could produce more than 250 million barrels of oil.
State geologists picked up exploration in the area a few years ago after companies began concentrating on extracting more readily accessible oil pools to be drilled. They told In Forum that what they found should lead companies to take a second run at what amounts to an “overlooked opportunity.”
He said entities looking to develop in the area may be improperly assuming that building more wells would simply speed up the process of extraction rather than collecting more oil overall.
“After we (Nesheim and Starns) did our work, we believe that it’s more than that, that when you drill middle Three Forks wells, you’re getting more oil out of the ground long term,” Nesheim said. “You’re not just speeding up your recovery, but you’re adding to your long-term recovery.”
As it stands, the area remains highly productive But state experts say they may have only scratched the surface of a reservoir with vast potential to exceed their current estimates.
There are 360 wells drawing from the middle Three Forks that have produced over 92 million barrels of oil and 238 billion cubic feet of gas — amounting to just under 2% of the total oil production in the Bakken-Three Forks petroleum system to date, according to the state Department of Mineral Resources.
“There have been about 20 wells drilled in this middle Three Forks unit per year for the last six years, but it probably should be double to triple that,” said Tim Nesheim, another state subsurface geologist.
Now it’s up to companies to take the new data to the next level, drilling down into newly confirmed finds and looking for additional reserves state geologists believe to be out there.