Since my family owns mineral rights in 15 1N6W, I looked up all the outstanding mineral leases on it and the surrounding sections. Since I had no way of telling the number of acres in each lease, I simply counted all leases from 2011 on and recorded the number for each section, and I was surprised by the data. Since 2011 CLR has leased, via Bearcat, the entire western part of the Township, and spilling over into 2N6W and 1N7W, 35 sections in all. The numbers of leases per section range from a high of 72 in Section 8 to a low of 8 in Section 20, and total approximately 876. There were three sections with no current leases in the western part of the Township, 12, 23 and 34 – I know that 23 is HBP, but I don’t know about 12 and 34.
According to CLR corporate data, in 2014 there will be an average of 18 CLR drilling rigs operating in the entire SCOOP, up from 12 in 2013. (CLR currently has 185 rigs in the Bakken, BTW) That same report said it takes an average of 77 days to drill a 3500’ horizontal well, so about 4.7 wells per rig per year, assuming zero time to transport and erect. Reduce that figure by 20% or so to simulate the real world and it comes out to about 67 new CLR wells that will be drilled in ALL of southern Oklahoma in 2014. So how does CLR plan on going about holding for production this seemingly massive commitment of 35 sections with such limited drilling capacity, given its operations in the rest of the area? Could they be trying to achieve some sort of economies of scale by leasing such a large contiguous area? Could they, perhaps, be planning on horizontal wells with production in two sections as a way of securing both with only one well? Looks like big plans backed by big money, getting pretty interesting to watch.