What's new

November 8, 2026

Production paused while it is rebuilt from free reports; terms and contact added

• Monthly production no longer appears in the full well viewer, on the spacing-order map or as spacing-unit totals. Those views will return once they are rebuilt from the free DMR monthly production reports, whose source can be documented end to end. Each well's page in the well index still shows its production as first reported in those free reports.
• The methodology page withdraws an earlier statement about where the production files came from, which could not be independently verified.
• Room to drill now reports how well its density ceiling separated drilled from undrilled units in the hindcast: a flagged unit was 3.4 times as likely to be drilled, with an AUC of 0.67, in-sample. It also shows how many candidate laterals sit in units with no surveyed well yet.
• The 3D viewer now follows the site's data-rights tiers. Per-well production, EUR, interference, pore pressure, cement and casing calls, and per-station log readings are no longer shown. Disposal wells appear as five volume classes, and disposed volume only in six-mile blocks with at least three disposal wells. Formation surfaces, organic richness, temperature and the modelled Dakota pressure remain, marked as derived from NDIC data. Wells now appear on the timeline in their spud year.
• New terms of use, a list of the outside services the site relies on in visitor privacy, and a contact section on the home page.

November 8, 2026

Room to drill: how much infill still fits in the Bakken

• A new page, Room to drill, counts the laterals that still fit in each of the 10,572 Bakken spacing units at the well density its own neighbourhood has reached, draws them into the gaps between the existing wells, and sums them by county, township and operator beside what the NDIC orders allow: 21,805 candidate laterals in 5,780 units. The method, its hindcast and its limits are on the page and the methodology page; the count is geometric and machine-made, has no economics yet, and says both.
• The 3D viewer's “Projected wells” layer now draws this candidate set in place of the earlier scenario model, in one colour or by lateral length, with its depth taken from the surveyed laterals nearby.
• Every spacing-unit page of the well index states its own count of laterals that still fit, with the neighbourhood target and the density drilled so far.
• The front page carries the map and the headline numbers.

Data: DMR wells, surveys and spacing units of October 17, 2026; orders signed through October 21, 2026; computed November 8, 2026

November 8, 2026

Well index: an engineer's production panel, in the site's colours

• Every well page's production section now opens with six figures: cumulative oil, the peak rate in barrels per producing day, the last twelve months against the twelve before, gas–oil ratio and water cut now and in the first year, and the share of gas sold. Below them: oil, gas and water on their own axes over one time axis, with rate, volume and cumulative views, a log scale and a month-by-month readout; trailing three-month gas–oil ratio, water cut and uptime; and the early-time and current facts, from months to peak and the first 3, 6, 12 and 24 month cumulatives to the latest rate as a share of the peak.
• An optional Arps decline fit (modified hyperbolic, with the conventions stated on the methodology page) draws a forecast to a 5 barrel-a-day floor and states its parameters and the remaining volume it implies. It is orientation, not a reserves estimate, and says so.
• The well index moved from its dark theme to this site's white paper, ink and blue, with oil, gas and water in dark lime, copper and dark blue. The page carries the figures, facts, table and the oil strip; the browser draws the rest from the data already on the page, so the index stays within its size budget.
• A well page can compare its well with the other surveyed wells of its spacing unit, and a unit page can show the production of every well inside it: oil rate, cumulative oil, gas–oil ratio or water cut against months on production or calendar time, the median across the wells, a sortable table, figures per 1,000 feet of surveyed lateral, and overlapping units on a switch. Nothing is stored for it; the browser reads the wells' own pages when asked, and the block says first what the comparison can and cannot claim (details on the methodology page).

Data: NDIC Monthly Production Reports, January 2003 to August 2026, as first reported; index built November 8, 2026

November 7, 2026

Bakken Subsurface 3D: geology surfaces regridded to the full log extent

• The shaded geology layers in the 3D viewer (shale organic richness, residual structure, curvature, Prairie salt, geothermal gradient, Bakken temperature and the pore-pressure gradients) now cover the whole area the digital logs reach. Five of them had been gridded against an older structure lattice and were drawn offset, with grey gaps along the edges.
• The gradient and temperature maps are built from 10,537 logged bottom-hole temperatures (6,819 before); the pore-pressure maps from 932 sonic wells (676); the organic-richness maps from density logs in 749 shale intervals (353). Sparse maps keep cells within 6 to 8 miles of a measurement; the dense formation tops keep 3 miles.
• The timeline now carries the month-by-month oil rate and producing days behind the yearly series, and the layer notes state each map's inputs.

Data: 3D edition built November 7, 2026 from NDIC directional surveys of October 27, 2026, production to January 2026 and FracFocus March 2026

November 7, 2026

A page for every well, spacing unit and order

• Find a well, in the header, opens the North Dakota well index: one page for each of the 44,054 well records NDIC publishes, with operator, status, location, map directions, nearby wells and a link that opens the well in the regional viewer. Rebuilt every day from the public DMR download.
• One page for each of the 10,573 drilling spacing units: the footprint with its well heads, the surveyed wells inside, the hearing orders that created or changed it, the latest stated well allowance, overlapping units, and links into the viewer and the cases and orders map. One page for each of the 13,420 orders matched to a unit. Order facts are machine-extracted from the signed orders and labelled as such.
• Every well page shows the well's monthly production from NDIC's free Monthly Production Reports, January 2003 to August 2026: oil, gas and water as a chart and a table, totals, and a CSV of every month. Values are as first reported; unknown months stay unknown. The years before May 2015 are read from the Division's PDF reports, which list a well in a unitized pool only inside its unit's total, so such wells start later and say so. 25,194 wells have a panel.
• A page for each of the 1,152 townships with wells or spacing units: a section grid with every well head in its quarter-quarter, the wells and units section by section, the orders on those units and the operators active there. Type a township such as 153-91 or sec 28 T153N R91W into the well search to reach it.
• The regional viewer honours ?well= and ?dsu= links, so every index page can open its well or unit in 3D.
• The methodology page describes the index, its coverage and when each part refreshes.

Data: well index built November 8, 2026 from the DMR wells layer of November 7, 2026 · units and orders generated November 8, 2026 from the GIS snapshot of October 17, 2026 and the orders snapshot of October 29, 2026 · production feed published November 7, 2026 from the monthly reports through August 2026

November 6, 2026

One source of truth for data dates

• Every page now shows the dates of the data it was built from, written from one release manifest at build time. The regional viewer, the methodology page and the cases and orders archive agree on what is current; the 3D edition states its own, older vintage.
• The main information pages share one site header and navigation, and page titles follow one pattern.
• The project's code is kept in a private repository while it is prepared for publication, so the links to it were replaced with a description of how the site is built and when each dataset is refreshed.
• This page.

Data: DMR GIS snapshot October 17, 2026 · Well Index October 28, 2026 · production through September 2026 (partial) · orders snapshot October 29, 2026

November 1 to 6, 2026

Land lookup, unit oil and viewer examples

• Cases and orders: find a spacing unit by township, range and section; cumulative reported oil for matched units; an Alger Field case study; pooling-size and signed-order charts.
• Inside the viewer: a page of filmed examples of what the regional viewer shows.
• Homepage: an "Explore my area" entry point and three ways into the data.
• Anonymous, cookie-free page-view counts with an opt-out on the visitor privacy page.

October 31, 2026

Bakken Subsurface 3D, public edition

• Every surveyed Bakken-system lateral in one 3D scene, with gridded surfaces, a depletion plane, disposal wells and projected-well scenarios.

October 28 to 29, 2026

Production refresh and cases and orders

• Monthly production extended from December 2024 to September 2026, with August 2026 as the default month.
• Cases and orders: the land behind North Dakota hearing orders, mapped by spacing unit, with hearing trends and case subjects since 2009.

October 17 to 21, 2026

Launch

• Regional 3D well viewer with survey metrics, operators, monthly production playback, spacing units and footage scenarios.
• Featured tours, EOR project pages and the methodology page.