This is not Farmer Mathistad of MacKenzie County. It is Farmer Rolfsrud of MacKenzie County. We don't know Farmer Mathistad, but he is probably not baling hay today. The upcoming Rolfsrud 55-Hole Golf Oil expedition to inspect the western reaches of North Dakota and research Mom's vague possibilities has gained intensity.
Here's the press account of the Mathistad strike:
ENID, Okla., July 9
Continental Resources, Inc. (NYSE: CLR - News) today announced initial results from its Mathistad 1-35H well completed in the Three Forks/Sanish formation in the North Dakota Bakken Shale area. The McKenzie County well, in which Continental has a 40% working interest, is the second that the Company has completed in the Three Forks/Sanish formation in North Dakota.
"The Mathistad 1-35H commenced production on July 4, 2008 and has flowed at an average rate of 1,095 barrels of crude oil equivalent per day, with 90 percent of production being crude oil and 10 percent natural gas," said Harold Hamm, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for Continental Resources. "This is a second positive data point in our effort to determine whether the Three Forks/Sanish formation is a separate oil-producing reservoir not drained by a horizontal well completion in the Middle Bakken zone above it. If the Three Forks/Sanish proves to be a separate reservoir, it would add significant incremental reserves to the Bakken play."
On May 20, 2008 the Company reported that its first Three Forks/Sanish well, the Bice 1-29H, had flowed at an average rate of 693 barrels of crude oil equivalent per day in its initial week of production. The Mathistad 1-35H was drilled 23 miles north northwest of the Bice well. At the site of the Mathistad 1-35H, the top of the Three Forks/Sanish formation lies approximately 75 feet beneath the base of the Upper Bakken shale. Previous to the Bice and Mathistad wells, Continental typically completed its North Dakota Bakken wells with the well bore drilled approximately eight feet below the base of the Upper Bakken shale, in the Middle Bakken zone.
Continental is the largest leaseholder in the Bakken Shale play, with approximately 500,000 acres in North Dakota and Montana. The majority of its acreage runs north-to-south along the Nesson Anticline in North Dakota.
Here's a photograph taken near Robinson, No. Dak. in 1926, when Erling Rolfsrud was about 14 years old. Gasoline had been discovered in the town well the previous year. The Robinson Development Company formed to investigate oil prospects. A.C. Townley developed an oil drilling operation by 1926 but it ceased within several years without any major oil being discovered.
"The derrick shown is equipped with a 20 inch core drill. The bunk house, where about 200 people can be accommodated with sleeping quarters and the cook house where several hundred can be fed at one time are seen in the center and right of the picture. For many months several hundred people gathered weekly to listen to Townley's story at this camp."
Fargo Forum, March 4, 1926, p. 1.
This North Dakota episode is just another in a long list of disappointments that helps us to understand why Norwegians are the way they are.
