Drilling Question

I'm in a Chesapeake unit for which approval was requested granted to drill Bedford Wells 1H - 6H.  Two and a half years ago, four wells were drilled, fracked and all equipment packed up and moved elsewhere.  Just this past week applicaltion was made to drill well 3H.  I guess they are planning to drill at least one of the remaining two wells for which initial approval was granted at the time the well pad was approved.

Does anyone know why a driller would not drill all six wells while equipment and personnel are initially in place?  Seems to me a piece meal approach would be more expensive to the driller.  Also, will wells five and six complete the extraction of natural gas from the rectangular shaped drill unit, or does wells five and six expand the size of the drill unit?

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Permalink Reply by Tico on February 5, 2013 at 11:20am
Your very lucky they drilled that many wells initially, they only drilled one each in the two units I am in and probably won't even come back to finish the other five that were proposed for each, lucky lucky lucky
Permalink Reply by kdj on February 5, 2013 at 3:45pm

These companies have no control over their product price, so their costs become the most importanrt factor in profitability. Holding as much land as possible (HBP) without paying high bonus rates would save them alot I believe. With more rigs available I think that could change the math a bit but oversupply of product would not help the bottom line either. Between all of these different inputs I imagine it is quite complex to manage everything profitably and those investors mean alot to a company, they look at things much differently than a landowner.

Permalink Reply by Brian Powers on February 13, 2013 at 3:50am

john-

In the offshore drilling and completions arena, it is very common to drill and complete multiple wells in "batch" phases, e.g., batch conductor driving, batch surface section drilling and casing, batch intermediate and production section drilling and casing, batch completions, etc.

 

The plus sides of this approach are: one set of plans to create, services, materials and logistics are easier to manage, rig moves are greatly simplified, etc.

The biggest negative of this approach in my experience is the inability of the teams to quickly learn and react to unforeseen problems on the subsequent wells. I once saw a hundred million dollars wasted on a subsea drilling template when a previously unknown but highly reactive and mobile shallow soil formation crushed a number of 30 inch diameter, one inch wall thickness conductor pipes, forcing us to have to start over. In our haste to move forward quickly, little time was afforded to study and learn from our problem in order to mitigate the disaster from occurring.

 

Successful batching of wells can happen, but it takes a committed team and patient management to make it happen, both are increasingly rare in today's oil and gas business.

 

Brian 

 

  

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