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Marathon oil’s Bakken play

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During the fourth quarter of 2007, Marathon Oil completed the acquisition of more than 70,000 net leasehold
acres in the Bakken Shale play in North Dakota. The acreage brings Marathon’s total Bakken Shale leasehold to more than 320,000 net acres. Marathon currently has six rigs running in its Bakken program and ended 2007 with a net production rate of 2,600 boepd.”

Marathon leased six new drill rigs specifically designed for piercing the Bakken shale formation. The formation is about 10,000 feet below surface and requires sophisticated techniques to fracture the oil bearing strata

Marathon had more than 200,000 acres under lease when it moved into North Dakota two years ago with plans to drill as many as 300 wells over the next several years.

FURTHER READING:
A Bakken Shale blog

Brigham Exploration has about 67000 acres Bakken formation and its first three wells are producing a total of 1000 bopd

Tristar is developing on the Saskatchewan part of the Bakken oil play.

Post the closing of the qcquisition of Private Southeast Saskatchewan Company Transactions, TriStar will have greater than 10,000 boepd of long life, light oil production in its Southeast Saskatchewan core area including a 100 percent working interest at Fertile. In addition, TriStar will have more than 1,175 (650 net) future development drilling locations for both conventional and Bakken light oil representing potential future capital expenditures net to TriStar of over $900 million, providing an extensive production and opportunity base which will not be affected by the recently announced royalty changes in Alberta. TriStar believes the Fertile pool has greater than 86 million barrels of original oil in place on both the Combined Lands and the Private Company 100 percent lands; less than 2 percent recovered to date.