Natural gas development (horizontal drilling/Hydraulic fracturing) is about to take a big leap forward with a new 3 dimensional technique — cube development.

Modern day shale drilling, which combines fracking with horizontal drilling, has largely been a 2-dimensional activity–drilling horizontally through a single shale layer in order to extract gas from tiny pockets within the shale. But there’s more than one shale layer commercially viable. Here in the northeast we have three layers actively drilled: the Marcellus, the Utica, and the Upper Devonian.

Until now, drillers have targeted a single layer. Sometimes they use the same vertical well bore to target a different layer–but that’s the exception rather than the rule.

The rule is changing. In Texas and a few other locations, drillers are experimenting with drilling allof the commercially viable shale layers at once–3D style. Encana has a “cube development” (3D) Texas well pad that sits on 16 acres. The pad hosts 19 shale wells and pumps 20,000 barrels of crude oil a day! Devon Energy has a 24-well pad project in Oklahoma. And others are giving it a try too.

Read more:

http://naturalgasnow.org/cube-development-promises-produce-gas-less-disturbance/