Super Laterals Are Getting More Out of Utica Shale
From E&P Mag:
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In 2013 the company drilled its first operated horizontal shale well—the Tippens No. 6HS—in the Utica Shale dry gas window. That well featured a lateral of 1,783 m (5,850 ft) at a total vertical depth of 3,017 m (9,900 ft) drilled in 49 days and was completed in 19 fracture stages, according to a corporate filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Data from the Tippens well and others played a key role in paving the company’s way to successful drilling campaigns in 2016 and 2017, according to Benjamin W. Hulburt, Eclipse chairman, president and CEO.
“Between our drilling and other operators involved in the effort we had a couple hundred wells that had varying lengths, from probably as short as 5,000 ft [1,524 m] up to about 11,000 ft or 12,000 ft [3,352 m or 3,657 m] before we really started the super-lateral program,” Hulburt told E&P. “In analyzing that database we could not detect a drop-off in recovery per foot as we went longer. It also was easy to see cost efficiencies by going longer.”
Those cost efficiencies, along with the market decline, were key to going longer.
“We kept pushing out the lateral length to determine if we saw a drop-off in recovery per foot and where the law of diminishing returns would be among the laterals in the Utica,” he said.Click here to continue the article.
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