What is one of the hottest plays in the country right now? 

One of the hottest plays in the country is right here in Oklahoma: the STACK – Sooner Trend, Anadarko (Basin), Canadian (and) Kingfisher (counties). The STACK is essentially the old Sooner Trend being re-developed horizontally. There is a ton of up-side with stacked pay zones in the Mississippian aged formations.

How can we identify the hottest positions in the STACK? 

Excellent question.... using Oseberg's datasets, we looked at bonus amounts which tells us how much operators are paying per acre. A bonus payment is money paid by the operator to the mineral owner. Whether drilling occurs or not, the mineral owner still receives the bonus payment. We believe this is a good indication of how valuable operators consider each tract of land and where they intend to drill.

Where can we find data about bonus amounts?

You may be thinking, a lease never includes the bonus amount, where are you getting this data? The answer lies in forced pooling regulation. In Oklahoma, if an unleased mineral owner is force pooled, they have the right to the “fair market value” for a lease bonus amount and this bonus amount is included in the Final Order of a Pooling.

And the good news...we pulled this data for you! 

Here is the good news: Oseberg has taken these orders and structured the data in them to make it easy to answer this question. Check out the map below (click for an interactive version) to see where operators are paying the most money per acre (they also include an AFE – Authorization for Expenditure).

What was the highest bonus payment offered in the STACK in 2017? 

During 2017, the highest bonus payment offered in the STACK was $7,000/acre. Not only is that the highest amount offered in the STACK, but it is the highest amount offered in the entire state of Oklahoma!  The second highest bonus payment in Oklahoma was also in the STACK in Blaine County. These are relatively high amounts considering the average bonus offered during 2017 was just below $3,000/acre.

How can I find out more?

The next question may be: do higher bonus amounts correlate with higher producing wells? We are happy to walk through the data together and share our findings – give us a shout at hello@oseberg.io to dig into more information around poolings.