The Bakken/Three Forks oil play is extremely active, with more than 2,500 horizontal wells drilled in Montana, North Dakota, and Saskatchewan during the past nine years. Typical well costs range between $4 -$8 million per well, suggesting the industry has invested more than $15 billion in this resource, in addition to lease, infrastructure, and operation expenses. Despite this enormous investment, the industry has struggled to identify best practices and many operators currently pursue significantly different strategies throughout the play. This paper will summarize the development philosophy and key learnings of one operator in completing this low permeability reservoir with hydraulically fractured horizontal wells. Significant production gains have been achieved through advancements in completion methods, improving the overall economics of the Bakken/Three Forks oil play. This paper describes the evolution of completion strategy, including: -Lateral length and number of stages -Method of isolation -Completion and fracturing techniques -Proppant type and concentrationThrough careful investigation and continual improvement, the authors have been able to significantly increase well production compared to their previous wells. Wells with improved completions have also experienced notably higher production rates than offset wells completed by operators with differing strategies. It is clear that lateral length and number of stages, coupled with proppant type and concentration, are key variables that have significantly improved well productivity and profitability. Included economic and financial analyses demonstrate that Bakken/Three Forks profitability can be dramatically improved by altering completion designs. Although specific treatment parameters should be adapted as formation characteristics vary across the play, it is believed this discussion of current design strategy will be useful to the SPE audience and accelerate optimization of Bakken/Three Forks completions. Future innovation will occur, and it is hoped that the publication of these learnings will encourage additional experimentation and optimization. This operator has drilled or participated in ~150 wells in the Bakken/Three Forks plays since 2006 and significant effort has been made to learn from experiences, design effective completions, and continuously optimize strategies to improve well performance. Excellent progress has been made, as early wells drilled by this operator produced merely 300 boepd on initial production, while recent completions have achieved over 5,000 boepd with close proximity and comparable reservoir quality. Finding and Development costs (F&D) have been reduced from ~$40 to ~$15 per barrel of recoverable reserves. With only a small percentage of locations drilled to date, this operator anticipates further improvement in completion strategies and corresponding production from future wells. Although Bakken drilling and completion practices will undoubtedly continue to evolve, it is believed that a discussion of this operator's e...