Sidney, Fairview, Savage: Elm Coulee, the field that started the modern Bakken era, and still Montana's leading oil county by a wide margin.
Elm Coulee is where the modern Bakken started. The field was discovered in 2000, and horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing proved the Middle Bakken here several years before North Dakota's boom began. Richland County is still Montana's leading oil producer, with roughly 1,151 producing wells and about 1.4 million barrels a month, and it carries the state's highest permit activity by a wide margin.
The program now is largely infill and redevelopment inside the existing footprint rather than new exploration. Kraken Operating is dominant. Continental, Sinclair, Devon, Slawson, Chord, Whiting, Petro-Hunt, and Heritage Energy also carry production or permits. That maturity means the honest valuation question here is how many locations remain on your specific unit, not whether the field works.
Richland is predominantly fee minerals, with a real federal component visible in the Egan Federal wells and Montana state trust sections 16 and 36 throughout. There are no reservation lands in the county, which distinguishes it sharply from Roosevelt County next door.
Two Montana specifics matter to your check. Montana withholds 6 percent of net royalty at the source, which is a tax prepayment rather than a fee and which many out of state owners never reconcile. And Montana has no dormant mineral act, so unlike North Dakota, your interest does not lapse for nonuse.
Send us a check stub or a legal description and we will tell you what your unit still supports.
Elm Coulee field, discovered in 2000, is where horizontal drilling and fracturing first proved the Bakken at scale, several years before the North Dakota boom.
Developed alongside the Bakken across the field.
Conventional pays that predate and underlie the shale development.
Wherever your tract sits in Richland County, we will research it free and value it with the work shown.
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