How Soon Does An Operator Frack A Well After Reaching Total Depth? -- September 21, 2014

At the top of the blog, across the top, there are several tabs, including one labeled, "FAQ," frequently asked questions. At the FAQ page there is a Q/A regarding how soon an operator fracks a well after it has reached total depth (vertical depth + the horizontal). The original answer needed to be updated with pad drilling.

This is how I would answer the question now. 

22. How soon does a company stimulate a well after completion of drilling?

Update, posted September 21, 2014: prior to pad drilling, fracking was subject to availability of frack spreads (to include personnel, equipment, and proppant), winter weather, and road restrictions, but that was about it. With pad drilling, everything has changed. Generally speaking the same pre-pad-drilling constraints still exist. But now, "operational constraints" come into play. Generally, operators will not frack a well that has reached total depth (vertical plus horizontal) on a given pad until all wells on that pad have reached total depth. The first-best example might have been CLR's 14-well Atlanta pad in Baker oil field southwest of Williston in 2013 - 2014 time period. That pad was watched closely, and it seemed to take forever to get the wells on that pad completed/fracked. It may have been a full 18 months from the time the first well was spud on that well until the 14th well was fracked.

Original: This varies. Buried deep in this site (that link is broken, unfortunately) one learns that EOG spudded a well on January 19, 2009, but did not plan to fracture stimulate it until July, 2009. EOG does not frack wells between November and March. [Update: I believe this was based on a comment from an EOG earnings transcript back in 2009; since things things may have changed.]  I assume that most wells are ideally fractured within a month of when drilling is completed but I do not know. However, due to the increased number of rigs in North Dakota and the increased pace of drilling, fracking has become the bottleneck to completing a well. In early 2010, a wait of six months was being reported to have a fracking crew in place after the well had been drilled. Halliburton announced in early 2010 that is fracking crews would now be working 24 hours/day to try to minimize the backlog.

EOG talked about this in August, 2014:

• pad completions 
• a lot of offset wells are taken off-line
• wells take longer to flow back as new wells are brought on-line
• production growth can be lumpy rather than linear