Historic Oil Field
Pine Field stretches along the northwest-trending Cedar Creek Anticline across Dawson, Prairie, Wibaux, and Fallon Counties in eastern Montana — one of the largest field outlines on a structure that already dominates the region. The discovery well, the Pine Unit No. 1, was completed in January 1952 after being drilled to test a subsurface seismic closure near the crest of the known surface anticline, and it produced four hundred and sixty-seven barrels of thirty-three degree gravity crude with a hundred and forty-eight barrels of water.
Pine belongs to the seismic era rather than the surface-mapping era. Earlier Cedar Creek fields were found by drilling folds visible from the ground, but the Pine Unit No. 1 was located specifically to test a subsurface closure identified on seismic data near the crest of the anticline. That distinction mattered: it meant operators could resolve structure at depth rather than infer it, and it opened the deeper Paleozoic section along the anticline to systematic rather than speculative drilling in the years that followed.
The January 1952 completion delivered four hundred and sixty-seven barrels of thirty-three degree gravity crude a day along with a hundred and forty-eight barrels of water — a solid, unspectacular result that accurately predicted the field’s character. Development spread the field across four counties, which is unusual even on the Cedar Creek Anticline and reflects how far the productive trend runs along the structural crest. That county spread has consequences for owners that have nothing to do with geology and everything to do with recording offices.
Since then Pine has followed the pattern of every field on the anticline: unitization, waterflood, slow decline, and a succession of operators as the large Cedar Creek positions consolidated from Shell through Encore and Denbury to ExxonMobil. Carbon dioxide flooding of the anticline’s Red River units has been planned and studied over that period. Owners should treat the field as a mature, injection-supported asset whose future depends on operator capital allocation rather than on any new exploration.
Pine produces from Paleozoic carbonates along the crest of the northwest-trending Cedar Creek Anticline, principally the Ordovician Red River with Silurian Interlake also present in the regional section. The trap combines the long surface anticline with the subsurface closure that the discovery well was drilled to test, and the productive area runs far enough along the structure to touch four counties. Reservoir quality in these dolomites and limestones varies between depositional cycles, so wells are managed as units addressing particular flow layers rather than as a single field-wide reservoir.
Water injection is the mechanism that has carried Pine through its long producing life, maintaining pressure across carbonate reservoirs with limited natural drive. Recovery in rocks like these is a question of sweep rather than of pressure alone, because injected water preferentially follows the better-connected cycles within the Red River. Carbon dioxide flooding of the anticline’s Red River units has been evaluated as a later stage across the trend. As elsewhere on the Cedar Creek Anticline, implementation has proceeded field by field rather than as a single programme.
The distinguishing practical feature of a Pine interest is administrative: the field spans four counties, so deeds, probates, and affidavits may need to be recorded in more than one, and heirs frequently discover that half their curative work was filed in the wrong courthouse. The production itself is mature waterflood output — small, steady, and slow to decline. We buy minerals and royalties in Fallon, Wibaux, Dawson, and Prairie Counties and provide free written offers.
County-level well data, production charts, and selling guides for the counties this field spans:
The discovery well, Pine Unit No. 1, was drilled to test a subsurface seismic closure near the crest of the known surface anticline. It was completed in January 1952 producing four hundred and sixty-seven barrels of thirty-three degree gravity crude with a hundred and forty-eight barrels of water.
Potentially documents in each county where your tract lies. The field runs along the anticline through Dawson, Prairie, Wibaux, and Fallon Counties, and Montana recording is county by county. We handle that curative work at our expense as part of a purchase.
Yes, at mature waterflood rates. Fields on the Cedar Creek Anticline have produced for many decades under injection, and the decline is measured over years rather than months, which is the defining difference between these interests and shale royalties.