Home-court advantage

MHA Nation plans to ramp up wells on tribal land

BY KAYLA PRASEK

When Missouri River Resources first drilled four tribally owned oil wells in March, it was a momentous occasion for President and CEO David Williams. Prior to drilling the wells, which are located near Mandaree, N.D., on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, MRR was only a working interest partner with several oil companies located in the Bakken.

“Our historical four-well project had been in the planning stages since we first acquired some acreage in 2012,” Williams says. “We said we’d eventually drill, but it was a little bit nerve-wracking because of how much money it costs to drill. I talked to the Three Affiliated Tribes council about it, and they gave me their blessing to drill. The Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara Nation had never been a producer of any oil wells since the ’50s, so it was a big step.”

New Town, N.D.-based MRR drilled two wells in the Bakken and two in Three Forks. Williams says his biggest goal in drilling the wells was to prove to the MHA Nation and to the oil industry that a tribally chartered energy company could successfully drill. MRR is averaging 2,500 barrels per well.

MRR was established in November 2009 “out of necessity,” Williams says. “A lot of things had been happening on the Fort Berthold Reservation, as far as production, drilling and leases.”

Williams had worked in the oil industry for 20 years up to that point, and he knew the Three Affiliated Tribes needed to be part of the production side, which led him to start an exploratory production department at MRR in late 2010.

“A lot of companies were leasing from (the tribe) and sometimes we’d get $50 an acre, sometimes we’d get $1,000 an acre. We needed some sort of strategy,” Williams says. “I talked with a lot of people to develop a business plan. We started up with zero leases. A lot of land had already been leased out to the bigger oil companies and we decided that if there was anything out there that could be salvaged, we would do it so we could jump on this Bakken bandwagon. We went to the council and we established a first right of refusal with our company.”

With that first right of refusal came MRR’s decision to become a working interest partner where it could. Since that decision, MRR has entered into partnerships with companies like Enerplus, ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil and Halcon Resources and is participating in 51 wells as