Whether it caused excitement at Oklahoma City’s Continental Resources we’re not sure, but an announcement by ExxonMobil Corp. to sell some of its Bakken assets certainly made the headlines.
Continental Resources is one of the major producers in North Dakota and what Exxon had to reveal must have raised eyebrows in the boardrooms at 20 North broadway in downtown Oklahoma City.
Exxon, the nation’s top oil producer and certainly the number one producer in the Bakken confirmed to Reuters it was exploring a sale of the wells located on 49,000 acres in North Dakota.
“ExxonMobil is exploring market interest for select assets in the Bakken Shale Play, which includes approximately 137 operated wells and 676 non-operated and royalty wells across 49,000 net acres in North Dakota”, a company spokesperson said after being questioned by Reuters.
Speculation by observers suggested such a sale could raise $500 million for ExxonMobil. The company’s production in the Bakken is an estimated 100,000 boepd. So could it lead to interest from Continental Resources and other companies wanting to expand on their existing assets in North Dakota? After all, it’s where Continental Resources and founder Harold Hamm got much of their wealth after he started exploration in the Bakken in 2003.
“We are in oil-manufacturing mode in the Bakken,” states the Continental Resources website.
According to the website, Drilling Edge, Continental had Bakken production of more than 5 million barrels of oil in August and most of it from 11 counties in the state.
Why sell the assets? It comes after Exxon’s $60 billion takeover of Pioneer Natural Resources last May. But it doesn’t mean Exxon will abandon the Bakken. The company indicated it will continue to invest in North Dakota.
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