The Golden Trend and the Junkyard Dog

By Stephen Clayman · August 8, 2016

All,

While the SCOOP and STACK receive most of the national press from bankers who love generalizations, trends, and acronyms, the venerable Golden Trend of Garvin County and McClain County has once again regained prominence.

The Golden Trend is roughly contained by a box constructed with Township 3N-4W in the lower left and Township 5N-3W in the upper right. The field was drilled beginning in late 1940s and has been productive in zones at many levels in the hydrocarbon column since that time. In 2015, production from the active wells totaled 2,853,809 barrels of oil and 41,493 mmcf of gas.

There have been three large trades in the field in the past two months. Rimrock Resource Operating (Tulsa) purchased the Merit Energy assets. Casillas Petroleum (Tulsa) purchased the Chesapeake Golden Trend package and is the undisclosed buyer of Continental Resources' "non-core" SCOOP assets which includes the Golden Trend leases.

With Merit and Casillas' entry into the play and the recent exploration activity by Citizen Energy II (Tulsa) and Eagle Exploration Production (Tulsa), the Golden Trend is poised to again become an active area of the Anadarko Basin.

Despite the obvious presence of hydrocarbons, nobody has promised these companies a rose garden. With as many as 10 vintage producing units in a single governmental section and with the base leases often dating back to the 1950s, land and title issues abound. Applications at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission have been protested and unresolved for months. With respondent lists numbering well over 500 parties, operators are bound to cross paths with those who would like to thwart progress and horizontal development.

It will be quite the melee for the four Tulsa operators as they scrap to put together horizontal units two acres at a time.

More to follow,

Berlin