At first glance the Whiting wells look better than EOG's. This is not the case when taking lateral length into consideration. The average lateral length of the Whiting wells are twice that of EOG's. In reality, the Whiting wells produced half the resource per foot. Well number 17092 is a great well, modelling to almost 2 million barrels of oil. These wells do not include natural gas or natural gas liquids in EURs, which accounts for an estimated 8% of production in Mountrail County.There are several story lines in Mike Filloon's most recent article.
the biggest story line: this takes me back to a discussion that does not get much attention -- long laterals vs short laterals. This discussion is not "dead." It was brought back up as recently as last year. I posted that discussion but don't have the link right now. Maybe a reader can find it, or link to another story talking about length of laterals.
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Bruce - I'm with a midwestern oil & gas company who has some equipment in Bakken and enjoy reading your insights, keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteWe also have had equipment in the Marcellus and Utica plays also and in late 2011 I had a long conversation with one of the head engineers for Range Resources about the subject of long vs short laterals in their Marcellus and Barnett wells. Their theory at the time was that that in the Marcellus the best lateral was around 4k feet. He said that they had drilled short laterals (around 2k) and long (6k and over) and found that the 4k wells performed best. I'll save you the long explaination as to why but basically he said that when you dollar cost average production from each type of well factoring not only drilling and fracing costs but also well repair and other factors the 4k wells performed the best.
This was in late 2011 and with the advent of pad drilling and such I would be interested if this was still the same.
He also mentioned that he play probably has it's own "best" length, i wonder what the Bakken's is? Since i'm on the drilling side of things i would like it to be shorter (more wells, yea) but with the costs of wells there i would have to believe it would be much longer.
Thank you for a great reply.
DeleteI don't know if I can find the post on the blog, but the case for shorter laterals in the Bakken certainly made sense. And now with Filloon's most recent note, it should raise the question again.
Hopefully others comment. Better still, it would be nice to see this addressed in corporate presentations but right now I would not expect that (I would not expect to see Bakken players to discuss pros and cons) -- simply because Bakken operators seem to be voting with their rigs/wells: long laterals.
I think it will take a "big" operator to make the leap and start doing short laterals on a larger scale to test the hypothesis. I think it would take "a Continental Resources" to try this on a large scale to evaluate the pros and cons.
But my hunch is that the large operators in the Bakken have done a cost/benefit analysis. I wonder if the cost of additional pads, additional roads offset the advantage of going to shorter laterals.
Again, thank you for commenting.