Focus for Shale Drillers Shifting From Exploration to Time and Cost Reduction

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From Bloomberg:
After spending $53 billion on a land binge to find hydrocarbons, the petroleum industry is counting on technological innovations -- better imaging data, speedier and longer horizontal drilling, among them -- to ramp up the flow of oil and gas from U.S. shale fields where they’re drilling more than 10,000 wells a year. 
The techniques are embraced by the biggest producers from shale such as Chesapeake Energy Corp. and Newfield Exploration Co. to boost shareholder returns by shifting money from exploration, which is winding down, into what’s known in industry parlance as manufacturing. The moves will help producers increase profit at a time shareholders are ousting executives and revamping boards because of poor performance. 
“Now that all of the established shale plays are known, companies can start focusing on the economics of these plays,” said Eric Gordon, who helps manage $35 billion at Brown Advisory Inc. in Baltimore. “They are under pressure to reduce drilling time and operating costs.” 
In Oklahoma, Chesapeake is blasting cracks into rocks surrounding each well at 10 times the rate of a few years ago. Newfield is using finely tuned mixtures of chemicals and minerals to stabilize wells that slice sideways through crude- soaked rock 10 times farther at half the cost per foot of a decade ago.
The whole article can be read here. 

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