One of the main players in the development of oil from the Bakken formation in the southeast has been Petrobank Energy and Resources, based in Calgary, who made a major acquisition of land in the April sale of provincial land rights by the province, spending $59.5 million to acquire 47,285 acres.

Since then, Petrobank has acquired even more lands through earned interest acres, which they earned by successfully drilling and establishing wells. The company planned originally on drilling 40, then 60, new wells in the area, but as vice-president Gregg Smith said, the company has now exceeded that for 2007, and will drill at least 80 or more wells in 2008. In addition, a partner has also been drilling wells in which Petrobank has a 50-per-cent interest.

"We're very pleased with the results we've been getting. The results are certainly meeting our expectations," said Smith. The growth has been such that they have five full-time workers in addition to the contractors they hire on a daily basis, to service an area extending from the Midale area north to Corning and east to Viewfield and Stoughton. Petrobank has also just finished building a battery and gas processing plant, located 10 kilometres south of Griffin, and in 2008 plan on building a pipeline in from the Creelman-Griffin areas to handle some of the growing production.

As Smith added, the facility they have will soon not be enough to handle all the production they will have, which is very spread out around the southeast, with the goal to add many more wells next year, and a second facility will likely be required. The facility south of Griffin, meantime, was built to be expandable, he said, as more tanks can be added for the oil, and the gas plant was built larger than their current needs, so it can handle more volume as their production grows.

"The oil these wells produce are very liquids-rich. We strip off the liquids and produce a very light oil called condensate," said Smith, explaining this crude turns into oil, gas and natural gas liquids. The gas is sent to market via a TransGas pipeline, while the oil is sent out through an Enbridge pipeline, entering it at several points.

Smith said with other companies, like Crescent Point, also being active in the Bakken play in the area, their oil and gas facility may be able to process some of their product as well in the coming years.

The aggressive growth is bringing a lot of money into the area, as according to Petrobank's website, the drilling and completion costs for each well is around $1.7 million. The economics of the oil recovery are good, however, as at least four wells can be drilled per section, and the provincial government has a royalty holiday of 35,000 barrels of oil per well.

The Bakken formation is capable of high production rates, with approximately 4.5 million barrels of original oil-in-place per section of land in the greater play area. The pool in the Bakken formation extends from southeast Saskatchewan into the U.S., underlying the states of North Dakota and eastern Montana. The U.S. Geological Survey is now estimating there is 413 billion barrels of original oil-in-place in the Bakken formation.