Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
We will go first to Jeff Hayden with Rodman & Renshaw Investment Bank.
John Hayden - Rodman & Renshaw Investment Bank
Just a couple of questions on 2010. I mean I don't want to pin you guys down on anything, but if we jump to Bakken, kind of given what you've seen, could you maybe give us a little bit of color on what type of program you could be running up there in terms of activity level number of rigs et cetera? Then maybe with the first well down, possibly any color on what might be a good number for us to think about in terms of well costs for the horizontal?
Randy Limbacher
Yes, Jeff, I mean it is a little premature to talk about that. I mean we can talk about kind of maybe our minimum plans and then go from there, but John, you want to?
John Clayton
Yes, Jeff, let me put it into context of how we look at these resource plays. The first thing we try to do is work this from a subsurface regional perspective, which we've obviously worked the area. Then we try to capture acreage and we put together nearly 0.25 million acres up there. Then we try to understand what Mother Nature gave us, how much resource is in place. We can do that several ways. The way we do it in our plays, Eagle Ford is no different, we drill vertical wells. We look at the rock through cores. We look at it through logging equipment and we try to quantify how much resource is in play, whether or not we can take it to the next step to make it horizontal. Then we drill horizontal to see if we can get commercial production out of the wells, and then we try to work on our cost and bring it into a full scale development.
So before I wanted to tell you maybe what our plans are for '10, kind of put into context of where we are on that cycle. So we have one well that you can come to the conclusion that we think there is a resource in play or we wouldn't have taken a horizontal, and we have another well that's testing another area 30 miles from that, but based on continued encouragement, our contract that we have up there has to drill a minimum of two wells per year. So we will address that first. So, we will drill at least two wells in 2010 to further delineate the play. But if we are continually seeing encouragement from up there, I would see us drilling maybe five or six wells, maybe on a minimum case, to further understand the play. Now that doesn't mean they'll all be drilled in January and we will have production rates that we will be selling oil on, but for us to delineate such a large resource, I'd look for us to drill maybe five to six wells.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
