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A Data-Driven Analysis of Bakken Core Area Expansion And Implications For Future Development Potential

Date Published: 8/31/2023
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Resource Abstract

This report summarizes the EERC’s analysis of the historical evolution of the Bakken core area (the region of best-producing locations in the Bakken) from 2008 through 2022. In 2008 and earlier, operators tested various locations within the Bakken and discovered sweet spots that formed core areas in southeastern Mountrail, northern Dunn, eastern McKenzie, and southern Williams Counties. However, these sweet spots expanded through time to encompass the present-day core. An unsupervised k-means clustering method was applied to classify Bakken producing wells into three groups (Group 1, 2, and 3) using their 6-, 12- and 24-month cumulative production volumes. Supervised classification using the machine learning algorithm, Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), was then applied to understand key drivers of well performance in each group using two sets of features, including 14 geologic and five completion design parameters. To evaluate future development potential, the well data were combined by drill-spacing unit (DSU) to generate a production group classification of Group 1, 2, or 3 for the existing 3,966 DSUs in the Bakken. The fitted XGBoost model from the well-based supervised learning was used to predict the production group classification from the broader set of 16,751 producing wells. The estimated future development potential (total number of wells) for the existing 3,966 DSUs was calculated by multiplying by the predicted number of DSUs per group and multiplying by the assumed number of wells per DSU. Therefore, the future development potential (number of potential future wells) is the difference between the calculated total development potential and the number of existing wells as of March 2022.

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