A Bakken tract rarely means one well anymore; it usually means a stack of Bakken and Three Forks benches drilled years apart under one spacing unit.
North Dakota and Montana operators have spent the last decade infilling the Williston Basin bench by bench, so a quarter section that had one Bakken well in 2010 may now have six to twelve wells across the Middle Bakken and multiple Three Forks benches, each carrying its own division order decimal within the same spacing unit. For a valuation file, that means pulling production for every well in the unit, not just the ones the family has statements for.
North Dakota's Industrial Commission maintains public well and production records by API number, which is the fastest way to confirm a unit's full well count before assembling the appraisal file.
North Dakota force-poolss non-consenting or unlocated mineral owners into spacing units fairly routinely, which means an heir who never signed a lease can still hold a poolsd interest earning royalty under a Commission order rather than a private lease. The documentation file for a pooled interest should include the pooling order itself alongside the division order, since the pooling order is what establishes the participation terms in the absence of a negotiated lease.
Where an interest was pooled rather than leased, the royalty and cost-bearing terms differ from a typical lease, and that distinction should be noted explicitly in the file rather than assumed to match standard lease language.
Because Bakken and Three Forks wells within one unit are often drilled in separate phases, a defensible valuation has to account for wells that exist today, wells with permits filed but not yet drilled, and undeveloped bench potential that has no production history at all. We treat these as three distinct categories in the record rather than blending them, since an examiner reviewing an estate or divorce filing will expect the produced-versus-undeveloped distinction to be explicit.
Decline curves on individual Bakken wells are steep in year one and flatten meaningfully by year three, so the file should note each well's approximate vintage alongside its most recent trailing production, rather than relying on a single blended average across wells of very different ages.
Interests acquired through 1980s and 1990s mineral buys, before the current drilling boom, sometimes carry assignments recorded in county deed books that have not been cross-referenced to the current spacing unit. Confirming that the recorded legal description matches the unit description avoids a mismatch that could understate the interest.
The basin can frame formations, product windows, decline shapes, well designs, spacing, takeaway, basis, deductions, operator behavior, and development pace. The subject remains the specific property schedule, lease, unit, wells, owner decimal, burdens, and effective date.
Producing wells, behind-pipe intervals, permits, offsets, undeveloped benches, recompletions, and broad operator inventory in the basin carry different levels of support. Each layer receives its own source date, timing assumption, production shape, burden, price case, probability, and discount.
Resolve these questions so the appraisal conclusion can be traced to a defined interest, date, method, and evidence set.
Modern Bakken development typically drills multiple wells per spacing unit across different benches over several years, so multiple concurrent checks from one unit are normal rather than an error.
It means the mineral owner did not sign a private lease before drilling began, and the North Dakota Industrial Commission issued an order setting the participation terms instead; the pooling order, not a lease, governs the interest.
Operator permit filings and North Dakota's public well records show approved but undrilled locations within a spacing unit, which is useful context for a formal appraisal even though undeveloped potential is not the same as current production.
Not always. A documentation-based valuation focuses on production records, division orders, and pooling or lease terms; a full title search is a separate legal step best handled by your attorney if the filing requires it.
Carry the same effective date, interest definition, evidence hierarchy, and limitations into these related appraisal procedures.
Eagle Ford interests often carry Spanish and Mexican land grant history. See how South Texas title complexity factors into a documentation-based appraisal.
