Overview To see how tightly they can pack wells in North Dakota’s Bakken oil play, Continental Resources is now running several pilot projects. In releasing some preliminary results from one pilot, Continental was upbeat. But rather than taking the company’s word for how that project is going, I took a close look at the production data available from North Dakota—and it looks to me like the results are actually bad news. Published 23 hours ago The first company to go big in the North Dakota’s Bakken oil boom was Continental Resources—as they call themselves, “America’s Oil Champion”—and they’ve long been on the optimistic side about the Bakken’s long-run potential. The company’s founder and CEO, Harold Hamm, has argued that the play could ultimately yield 24 billion barrels of oil. Continental’s president bumped that number higher in a March 2014 talk, saying the Bakken could yield 32 billion barrels . […]