Blue Buttes Field sits on the southern portion of the Nesson Anticline in McKenzie County, North Dakota. It was opened in the mid-1950s during the wave of drilling that followed the Beaver Lodge discovery, producing from Madison carbonates and later from the Ordovician Red River. Half a century afterward the same acreage was drilled again for the Middle Bakken and Three Forks. The result is a field where an owner can hold conventional production dating to the Eisenhower administration and horizontal shale production from the last fifteen years under a single description.
The Nesson Anticline was the target of intense exploration through the 1950s after Amerada proved oil at Beaver Lodge in 1951. Blue Buttes was one of a string of structural fields established along the trend, and it produced from Madison carbonates at depths of several thousand feet. Later drilling on the structure established production from the Ordovician Red River B, a thin dolomite that would prove important elsewhere in the basin as well. Development in this era was vertical and pool by pool.
Through the second half of the twentieth century Blue Buttes settled into the pattern typical of Williston conventional fields: pressure maintenance and waterflooding in the carbonate pools, gradual decline, and periodic recompletions into shallower or deeper zones. Amerada Hess held a long-standing position across the area, and the name Hess remained associated with the field into the modern era. Production was steady rather than spectacular, and lease and royalty ownership largely stayed put across generations of the same families.
Horizontal drilling changed the field again beginning in the late 2000s. Operators targeted the Middle Bakken and Three Forks thousands of feet above the old Madison pays, and Blue Buttes joined the long list of legacy Nesson Anticline fields with a second, unconventional life. Studies of Middle Bakken well performance in the field have been used to characterize the reservoir more broadly. Owners with old interests here often saw royalty activity resume decades after they assumed the tract was finished.
The field lies on the southern end of the Nesson Anticline, a structural high that traps oil across a remarkable range of ages. The original production came from Mississippian Madison carbonates, joined later by the Ordovician Red River B — a thin, finely crystalline dolomite that yields modest net pay but good oil saturation. Well above those sits the Bakken petroleum system, with the Middle Bakken and Three Forks producing only through horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing. Structure controls the conventional pays; rock quality and completion design control the shale wells.
Waterflooding has been used in the conventional carbonate pools at Blue Buttes to maintain pressure and sweep oil toward producers, which is why those wells have produced for so many decades at low but persistent rates. The Red River B in this part of the basin has also been a target for pressure support in various forms. The Bakken and Three Forks wells drilled over the same acreage receive no such support: they are stimulated once, produce hard, and decline steeply.
A Blue Buttes interest is worth understanding zone by zone. The conventional pays deliver a small, durable stream; the horizontal Bakken and Three Forks wells deliver most of their value in the first few years, with the remaining undrilled locations carrying much of the upside. Depth-limited deeds are common in fields this old, so what you actually own may not extend to every producing horizon. We buy minerals and royalties in McKenzie County and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Because the acreage was drilled a second time for a completely different reservoir. The original wells produced from Madison and Red River carbonates. The recent wells are horizontal Middle Bakken and Three Forks wells thousands of feet shallower, made possible by drilling and completion technology that did not exist when your family leased the tract.
Frequently yes — many old leases are held by production and cover all depths, which means the original lessee’s successors can develop new formations without a new lease. Whether that is true for your tract depends on the lease language and on whether a Pugh clause or depth limitation applies. We check this before making an offer.
Your check stubs list the wells and your decimal in each. The North Dakota Industrial Commission also publishes well and production records searchable by operator and location. If you send us your stubs or legal description, we will identify every well and unit touching your acreage and return a free written offer.