Medora, Fryburg, Gorham: the most stacked and the most federally encumbered county in western North Dakota, with Bakken, Madison, Red River, and Tyler production under the same ground.
Billings County is the smallest county in North Dakota by population and one of the most complicated by title. Medora is its only incorporated city. Underneath it sit Bakken and Three Forks on the southern flank, the Madison at Fryburg, deep Red River, and the Tyler Formation along the Dickinson to Fryburg trend. Roughly 408 wells produce out of about 2,000 drilled, and county output peaked in the early 1980s at a level the shale era has not matched.
The defining feature is federal encumbrance. Theodore Roosevelt National Park's South Unit is closed to leasing outright. Little Missouri National Grassland covers a large share of the rest, which means Forest Service surface over federal minerals. The Northern Pacific land grant checkerboard also runs through the county, so odd numbered sections were patented with minerals reserved and those reserved interests now sit with corporate successors rather than with local families.
And the Little Missouri River bisects the county. Whether it is navigable, and therefore who owns the bed minerals, has been contested and is not settled by the statute that resolved the Missouri River question. If your tract touches the river we will tell you that plainly rather than pricing around it.
Send us what you have. We will tell you whether your interest is fee, federal, inside a unit, or affected by the riverbed question, and what it is worth in each case.
The southern flank of the play, modest but active. Petro-Hunt has been the recent driller.
The Fryburg field, including the large federal Theodore Roosevelt Madison Unit.
Deep Ordovician conventional production with a long history.
Billings sits on the Dickinson to Fryburg Tyler trend, with the Rocky Ridge, Tracy Mountain, and Medora fields.
Wherever your tract sits in Billings County, we will research it free and value it with the work shown.
We buy in every North Dakota county, including ones without a page here. See the full county index or the North Dakota overview.
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