The Parshall Field in Mountrail County, North Dakota is where the modern Bakken began. In 2006 EOG Resources completed the Parshall 1-36 well east of the traditional Nesson Anticline fairway and found the Middle Bakken producing at rates nobody expected that far off structure. Within two years leasing had spread across western North Dakota and the state was on its way to becoming one of the largest oil producers in the country. For mineral owners around Parshall and New Town, the field is both a landmark and a lesson in how differently a shale royalty behaves from a conventional one.
North Dakota had produced oil from the Bakken since the 1950s, but only in scattered vertical wells and early horizontal attempts that no one could repeat reliably. In the mid-2000s an independent prospector assembled acreage east of the established Nesson Anticline trend and sold the position to EOG Resources. EOG completed the Parshall 1-36 in 2006, and the well came in far stronger than the surrounding geology suggested it should. Word moved quickly through Mountrail County, and the leasing rush that followed reset lease bonus and royalty expectations for landowners across the western half of the state.
What made Parshall unusual was that the Middle Bakken there is naturally overpressured and comparatively free of formation water, so early wells flowed clean oil without the marginal economics that had defeated earlier operators. EOG drilled the area densely through the late 2000s, and the production reported in state filings turned the Bakken into a national play almost overnight. Capital that had been committed to the Barnett and the Fayetteville was redirected to North Dakota, and drilling permits, rig counts, and mineral prices in Mountrail County all moved together within a matter of months.
EOG Resources has long been associated with operations across the Parshall Field, which is now well into its second and third phases of development: infill drilling on tighter spacing, Three Forks tests beneath the original Middle Bakken wellbores, and refracs of the earliest completions. Many wells drilled in 2006 and 2007 still produce, but at a small fraction of their opening rates. That pattern — enormous early volumes followed by a long, thin tail — is the single most important thing a Parshall royalty owner needs to understand about the interest they hold.
Parshall produces from the Middle Bakken, the dolomitic siltstone and sandstone interval sandwiched between the Upper and Lower Bakken shales at roughly 9,000 feet in Mountrail County. The shales are the source rock; the Middle Bakken is the reservoir, and it gives up oil only because hydraulic fracturing creates permeability the rock does not have on its own. The eastern Parshall area is notable for unusually low water saturation, which is why early wells there produced clean oil in a part of the basin operators had written off.
There is no waterflood or CO2 flood at Parshall in the conventional sense. Recovery factors in the Middle Bakken are low — commonly estimated in the single digits to low teens as a share of the oil in place — so operators chase additional barrels through drilling rather than injection: tighter infill spacing, Three Forks benches beneath the original wells, and refracturing older completions. Gas huff-and-puff pilots have been tested in the Bakken, but nothing on the scale of the Permian CO2 floods has taken hold in North Dakota.
A Parshall royalty is front-loaded. A new Bakken well can pay more in its first year than in the following five combined, and once flush production is gone the check settles into a long, modest tail. That makes remaining undrilled locations, Three Forks potential, and where each existing well sits on its decline curve the real drivers of value — not the size of last year’s checks. Owners who inherited Mountrail County minerals often hold interests under both producing and undeveloped spacing units. We buy minerals and royalties in Mountrail County and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
Yes. The field has hundreds of horizontal wells and continues to report production to the North Dakota Industrial Commission, though the earliest wells now produce a small fraction of what they made in 2007 and 2008. Newer infill and Three Forks wells make up much of the current volume.
Horizontal shale wells decline steeply by design. A Bakken well typically loses well over half of its opening rate in the first year or two, then flattens into a long, low-rate tail. That is normal reservoir behavior, not an error by the operator — but it does mean the early checks are not a reliable guide to what the interest will pay in the future.
Buyers look at your net mineral acres and decimal interest, how many wells already produce on your spacing units, how far down the decline curve those wells are, and how many Middle Bakken and Three Forks locations remain undrilled beneath you. Send us your legal description or a check stub and we will put a free written offer in front of you.