ABSTRACT

The Devil's Basin oil field, located on the Central Montana Uplift, was the first wildcat discovery of oil in Montana. The discovery was made in December, 1919, by the Van Dusen Oil Company's well No. 1, located in Section 24, T. 11N., R. 24E. This well was drilled near the top of the Devil's Basin anticline, a large surface structure.

Erosion has exposed the Kootenai formation on the crest of the anticline. A deep test, the Clark Drilling Company's well, Northern Pacific No. 1 located in Section 9, T. 11N., R 24E., penetrated a stratigraphic section consisting of lower Cretaceous, Jurassic, Pennsylvanian, Mississippian, Devonian, Ordovician and Cambrian sediments. Production is obtained from a limestone bed within the Heath formation of Mississippian age and appears to be controlled by fracture porosity and permeability as well as by structural position.

As the field did not prove to be of great commercial importance it was shut-in in 1937. Two of the old wells have been put on part-time production and 875 barrels of oil was recovered from them in 1955. Two new producers completed in November, 1953, and January, 1954, in the same zone down the southeast plunge of the Devil's Basin anticline have been abandoned as noncommercial.