Bakken Mineral Rights

A Bakken well tells you most of what it is going to tell you in the first eighteen months, so our review here leans harder on decline curve math than it does almost anywhere else in the country.

The Williston Basin play in North Dakota and eastern Montana, covering the Bakken and Three Forks formations, is known for steep early production followed by a fast decline into a long, lower-volume tail. Mountrail, McKenzie, Williams, and Dunn counties carry the bulk of the core development, with operators like Continental Resources, Hess, EOG, and the company now known as Chord Energy running the majority of the active drilling programs.

Because that decline behavior is so well documented across thousands of wells, we can model a Bakken interest with more confidence in the shape of the curve than we can in a play with less production history. That is exactly why we underwrite Bakken packages primarily off proved developed producing data rather than speculative undrilled inventory.

Why we weight PDP over undrilled locations

North Dakota's public production records let us pull monthly volumes for essentially every well in a spacing unit, which means we can build an actual decline curve rather than guessing at one. A tract with three or four years of consistent production gives us a much clearer picture than a tract with permitted-but-undrilled locations, where the outcome depends on capital allocation decisions we cannot see in advance.

This is not a knock on undeveloped Bakken acreage, some of it still sits in active spacing units with real drilling potential. It just means we price that upside more conservatively than we price a well with an established curve, because the range of outcomes on an undrilled location is simply wider.

Three Forks versus Middle Bakken, and stacked development

Many spacing units in the core counties now have both a Middle Bakken well and one or more Three Forks benches developed underneath it, which changes how much total inventory a section carries. We check whether a tract's unit has been co-developed across both target zones or whether only the Bakken bench has been drilled, since Three Forks upside can still be meaningful in some units.

Where the Three Forks has already been fully developed alongside the Bakken, we treat the tract as closer to its terminal decline profile with limited remaining inventory, which is a more conservative but more accurate way to underwrite a mature Williston Basin package.

North Dakota title mechanics owners should know about

North Dakota requires mineral deeds and leases to be recorded at the county level, and the state's centralized oil and gas records make it easier for us to confirm production history than in some other states, which usually speeds up our review once ownership is established. Owners who inherited a Bakken interest from a family member who never lived in North Dakota should expect a probate or affidavit of heirship step if the estate was never formally settled there.

We also see a fair number of interests still tied to leases signed during the original 2008 to 2012 boom, some of which carry royalty terms below what would be negotiated today. That does not affect our purchase process directly, but it is worth an owner knowing when they compare their check to current market activity in the county.

Water handling and takeaway costs that shape the netback

Bakken wells produce a lot of water relative to oil volume, and disposal costs, along with pipeline and rail takeaway capacity out of the Williston Basin, both feed directly into the operator's realized price and the deductions that show up on a division order statement. A tract sitting behind an operator with dedicated gathering and disposal infrastructure typically nets a cleaner realization than one still relying on trucked water handling.

We ask for the current statement rather than an older one specifically because takeaway economics in this basin have shifted more than once as pipeline capacity out of North Dakota expanded, and a stale statement can understate what a tract is actually netting today relative to wellhead price.