How Longer Laterals Are Extending Bakken’s Long Life—Chord CEO
Chord Energy is drilling longer 3- and 4-mile laterals in the middle Bakken to extend inventory life—and closely watching new oily zones being tested in the Williston Basin’s stacked pay.
It was a modest well by modern standards: an IP rate of 196 bbl/d from a 1,700-ft lateral. But its recipe of combining horizontal drilling and fracking would fuel the rise of the Bakken and the U.S. “shale revolution” as we know it today.
But after 25 years, the Bakken is no longer a new frontier. The basin’s core is so densely developed, it’s hard to spot white space on the map.
“If you think about the Bakken, it’s a mature asset and a mature basin,” Chord Energy CEO Danny Brown said June 4 at Hart Energy’s Energy Capital Conference.
Chord Energy was formed through the 2022 merger of Whiting Petroleum and Oasis Petroleum, both of which went through bankruptcy in 2020 through the lows of COVID-19.
But today, Chord is one of the top producers in the Bakken and has streamlined its portfolio into essentially a Williston pure play.
“We had to try and make economic returns that were at or better than what we saw in the core as we started to move away from the core,” he said.
Chord is bringing drilling inventory once considered fringe and less economic into the development plan through longer laterals.
The company has drilled more and more 3- and 4-mile Bakken wells since the merger closed in 2022.
Chord has “a couple hundred” 3-mile laterals under its belt at this point, and “it’s working fantastically,” Brown said.
“Not only have we seen a significant drop in our breakeven cost, we now have areas that were once somewhat circumspect from an inventory standpoint delivering economic returns stronger than what we saw several years ago in the core,” he said.
Bolstered with confidence by successful 3-mile wells, Chord has drilled three 4-mile Bakken wells so far.
Chord has a 1.3-million-acre leasehold across the Williston Basin. (Source: Chord Energy)
The first 4-mile Bakken well was spud in late 2024 and completed in February. Chord reached a total depth exceeding 30,400 ft, vertical and lateral combined, while cleaning out frac plugs.
Chord has drilled through around 4 years of inventory since Brown joined the company through Oasis in 2021.
“It’s really been because we continue to push the economic thresholds of the basin lower and we’ve widened the area that we think is prospective,” Brown said.
Wider spacing and longer laterals have brought down Chord’s breakeven prices between $8/bbl and $12/bbl.
Chord’s history has been written largely through M&A. The merger of Oasis and Whiting combined two large positions in the Williston Basin.
Last year, Chord got bigger in the Bakken through a $4 billion cash-and-stock acquisition of Enerplus. The deal also included Enerplus’ non-operated natural gas asset in the Marcellus, which Chord is looking to sell.
In 2023, the company acquired Williston Basin assets from Exxon Mobil subsidiary XTO Energy for $375 million in cash.
Outside of M&A, exploration underway in the Williston Basin gives an upside to Chord’s massive acreage position in the future.
Operators are testing the basin’s deeper zones historically tapped through vertical production. The middle Bakken bench is the Williston’s top target. Producers have also landed horizontal wells in the deeper Three Forks benches.
Chord is focused on the middle Bakken’s repeatability and compelling returns right now. But the company is closely watching drilling activity in other zones by nearby operators to monitor their results.
“We’ll let some others do some R&D for us,” Brown said.
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