Oh yes, and....
Again, thankyou Naamkat Schaefer for providing your hidden agenda.
"Primary intends to find a partner for their large land position. This is not unusual for juniors in emerging shale plays – I have written about the Paris Basin shale play in France, where junior producer Toreador Resources (TRGL-NASD, $14.48 and another OGIB portfolio pick at $8.81 only two months ago) brought in Hess Corp (HES-NYSE) to joint venture 50% of their play – for a whopping $265 million.
Murphy Oil (MUR-NYSE), Rosetta Resources (ROSE-NASD), Quicksilver (KWK-NYSE) and Newfield Exploration (NFX-NYSE) are the larger producers on the Montana side of the play. Rosetta has publicly stated they expect 12-13 million barrels of oil per section. Newfield has said they now have one horizontal well producing from the play – they just didn’t give an IP rate.
Rosetta and Newfield have been the most active in the US side, with each drilling about eight wells this year – most of them vertical test wells, or “strat” wells as the industry calls them, to test for rock stratigraphy – a geological term that means studying how rocks are laid down; studying the layers of rock.
Covenant Resources (CVA-TSXv)and Mountainview Energy (MVW-TSXv) are also active in the US side – Covenant will be spending $3 million in 2010-2011 to drill at least eight vertical test wells on their 41,500 acres (64 sections; 640 acres in one square mile). In their corporate presentation, Mountainview says they own 74,000 net acres in the Alberta Bakken and will be spending $5.8 million there in 2011.
ARKANOVA ENERGY (AKVA-OTCBB) has 6400 acres, and Abraxas Petroleum (AXAS-NASD) has 3000 acres.
Macquarie Capital says in a report dated October 18 2010 that shareholders in these juniors could be happy as they get bought out by more senior companies looking to get involved in the play."
Reference - Oil and Gas Bulliten November 16, 2010