williston

WPX Energy Inc. is loosening the reins in the Williston Basin with an eye on resuming completions and raising the rig count to three from one before year’s end.

Firefighters were allowing a massive fire at the Red River Oilfield Service Co.’s facilities in the Williston Basin to burn late Tuesday as North Dakota state health officials monitored the situation.

There are several other plays and deeper formations yet to be tapped in the Bakken/Three Forks shale play, and the industry is still trying to determine how many total wells it will take to fully recover all the resources in the area, North Dakota’s chief oil/natural gas regulator, Lynn Helms, said Thursday during the final day of the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck.

Over the last five months, the number of horizontal drilling rigs targeting oil in the Permian Basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico has climbed by more than five dozen, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), marking a steep ramp-up in activity.

WPX Energy Inc.’s remarkable results from natural gas drilling in the Piceance Basin will play second fiddle to oil targets this year as the Tulsa producer attempts to right its financial performance, the CEO said Tuesday.

Reflecting reports of decreasing well completion costs in North Dakota’s Williston Basin, major Bakken Shale producer Kodiak Oil and Gas Corp. said Wednesday it expects its production to increase by 45% to near 44,000 b/d in 2014, despite decreasing its capital expenditures below the billion-dollar level of recent years.

The Williston Basin centered in North Dakota and spreading into parts of adjacent states and Canada carries huge long-term potential, and operators are finding that there is no single formula for unlocking its treasure of crude oil and natural gas, according to senior executives at Denver-based Kodiak Oil & Gas Corp.

Alliance Pipeline Ltd. has completed its 80-mile Tioga Lateral Pipeline in western North Dakota, connecting a Hess Corp. natural gas processing facility near Tioga, ND, with ties to the Alliance mainline near Sherwood, ND.

As part of a strategic review aimed at forming a smaller, more profitable company, Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s (Oxy) board of directors on Friday authorized pursuit of selected asset sales, including potentially some overseas and Midcontinent assets, along with a portion of a general partner interest in Plains All American Pipeline (PAAP).