Update On Effectiveness Of Rigs Drilling In The Bakken Shale -- The Manufacturing Phase In Drilling Out The Bakken -- June 24, 2014

We've discussed this before (see the tag). The industry refers to it as "rig efficiency." I like to refer to it as "rig effectiveness." To me there is (more than) a slight difference.

Over at Rigzone there is a five-page article on the effectiveness of rigs in drilling tight / unconventional oil. This is another must-read, must-bookmark articles. It begins:

At the drilling automation conference there were some interesting discussions of what producers want from modern drilling rigs and how equipment and operational changes made in recent vintage rigs have influenced their efficiency, and thus the cost of drilling shale wells.

One drilling contractor stated that 80% of wells in major shale basins are now being drilled from pads. Embracing pad drilling has as an objective, the pulling of lower-quartile performing rigs up closer to those rigs in the top quartile of performance.

An official of a shale producer commented that one aspect of drilling efficiency, besides reducing the time required to drill wells, was to increase their standardization such that every well becomes the best well the company ever drilled in the basin.

This representative began his presentation by saying that in the past, if you asked a producer about the best well he had drilled in a field, he would give you a low number of days. But the reality is that had you asked him to give you the history of the days needed to drill all the wells in that field, you would find that the days-per-well number would jump all around with only a few wells being the best or close to the best well drilled. He referred to this phenomenon as selective memory failure because producers always focus on their best well and not their average well or the variability of drilling performance.

What producers are really trying to accomplish in their focus on rig efficiency is to eliminate the drilling-time variability. In other words, producers want all wells to be their best wells drilled.

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Minor Note On The Torquay (Three Forks)

Some time ago I posted a fairly substantial update on the Torquay (Three Forks) prompted by news from Crescent Point. Since then others have also written about the Torquay. I don't think this link says anything that hasn't been posted on the MDW blog, but it has nice graphics and it puts everything together. The site is aimed for investors. My site, on the other hand is not an investment site. So, without further ado: The Oil Voice article on the Torquay.