Question re shale well deployment

Still trying to get a feel for how the whole gas well process works. My main question is regarding how the single, vertical well is used in conjunction with the laterals (are laterals wells, too?).

To be specific, let's say you have one vertical well drilled, with four laterals to actually retrieve the gas. The vertical goes down to the Marcellus and the laterals pull the gas out from that shale. Let's say, then, that the O&G company wants to go after potential gas in the Utica or some other shale formation below the Marcellus. Could that same vertical well be used to explore and recover from a deeper shale formation, or would a new vertical well have to be drilled to accomodate the deeper drilling? In my example above there is four laterals, so could those laterals be used beyond the Marcellus depth, or are they strictly devoted to that one shale formation?

The example I used above is real because that is the arrangement we have with our recently-signed lease. The lease is for more than the Marcellus shale, but the Marcellus is where they are beginning their search. So, as i said, I'm just trying to get a feel for how things might proceed once the four laterals are in place.

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0i7okn54zwbdoPermalink Reply by 0i7okn54zwbdo on February 21, 2014 at 6:14pm

"The vertical goes down to the Marcellus and the laterals pull the gas out from that shale. Let's say, then, that the O&G company wants to go after potential gas in the Utica or some other shale formation below the Marcellus. Could that same vertical well be used to explore and recover from a deeper shale formation, or would a new vertical well have to be drilled to accomodate the deeper drilling?"

One vertical, one horizontal per pay zone is the rule.  So if I'm drilling four Marcellus laterals I'm putting in four verticals from which to kick off those horizontals.  Now if I'm drilling multi-formation laterals I may use the same vertical, but that design is done before my bit touches the ground.  It's unlikely to see a company come back and reopen a vertical to drill it deeper while there is a producing lateral.  Frankly it's not that expensive to drill another vertical hole and start a new lateral into another formation after the fact.

Permalink Reply by NYPAShale on February 21, 2014 at 7:03pm

OK, then I was totally off in my thinking on this. I guess the way it was described to me made me think that one well would handle x number of laterals. Thanks for the clarification.

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