SCOOP & STACK Mineral Rights

Few plays have swung as hard between hot and cold as the SCOOP and STACK, and a valuation that leans on 2017 headlines instead of current permits will miss badly.

SCOOP, the South Central Oklahoma Oil Province, and STACK, the Sooner Trend Anadarko Canadian Kingfisher play, cover overlapping acreage in the Anadarko Basin across Grady, McClain, Canadian, Kingfisher, and several neighboring counties. The Woodford shale is the primary target across both, with the Meramec and Springer formations adding stacked-pay potential in parts of the play. Continental Resources built much of its identity around this acreage, alongside Devon Energy and, following its merger with Conoco, Marathon Oil's legacy STACK position.

A Genuinely Cyclical Play

SCOOP and STACK activity surged from roughly 2014 through 2018 as operators raced to hold acreage and prove out the Woodford and Meramec, then cooled meaningfully as results in some areas disappointed relative to the early enthusiasm and capital rotated toward more consistent basins like the Permian. That cycle matters directly for valuation: a comp from the peak activity years overstates what current buyers are actually paying, and an owner relying on an old number, or an old reputation for the play, is working from stale information.

Oil Window vs Gas-Condensate Window

The play isn't uniform in what it produces. Parts of the SCOOP and STACK sit in a more oil-weighted window, while other areas, particularly deeper or more easterly acreage, produce more gas and condensate. That distinction changes both the trailing revenue mix and which commodity price the valuation should track most closely, so two interests in the same county-level play name can have meaningfully different pricing sensitivity depending on which window they actually sit in.

Stacked Benches, Uneven Development

Where the Woodford, Meramec, and Springer are all present and economic, operators can develop more than one bench from a single pad, similar in concept to the Permian's stacked pay, though generally with fewer proven benches and more variability in results county to county. Risked upside for an interest here should reflect how many of those benches an active operator is actually targeting nearby, not the full theoretical stack, since not every bench has proven commercial in every part of the play.

Reading Current Operator Commitment

Because this play cooled from its peak, checking whether the operator holding acreage near a specific interest maintains an active current drilling program, versus simply holding acreage without near-term plans, is a more important diligence step here than in a consistently hot basin. Continental's continued commitment to its core SCOOP and STACK position is a different signal than a smaller operator with scattered, inactive permits nearby.

Comparing Against Neighboring Basins

Owners sometimes compare a SCOOP or STACK offer against numbers they've heard from the Permian or Eagle Ford, but the comparison doesn't hold up well given how differently the two plays have cycled. A fair comp set for SCOOP and STACK acreage draws from recent transactions in the same county and window, ideally the same operator's active area, rather than pricing built for a more consistently active basin elsewhere in the country.

That said, a genuinely active pocket within the SCOOP or STACK, where a committed operator is drilling multiple wells per section, can carry a multiple that competes reasonably well against other unconventional plays, so the play's overall reputation for having cooled shouldn't be read as a blanket statement about every acre within it. Grady and McClain counties, in particular, have retained more consistent activity than some of the play's outlying edges, and that county-level difference is often a better predictor of your multiple than the SCOOP or STACK label itself, or which of the two overlapping names gets applied to your specific acreage on a given map, since both terms often describe the same underlying Woodford target from slightly different angles.