American Oil and Gas Reporter - January 2015 - 90

Unconventional Resource Science
sometimes costs the company as much as
2,000 boe/d production. The good news,
however, is the shut-in wells come back
with no deterioration, according to Craft.
"The sooner you get into a manufacturing mode, the sooner you start reaping the
benefits," he states. "Our type curve really hasn't changed much since the first six
months of our program, with the exception
that gas and NGLs have exceeded our expectations. We see this as a positive and
believe it will drive our EURs higher."

CONSOL Energy and Noble Energy entered a joint venture in
September 2011 to begin developing the Marcellus Shale. The
two companies are running four
rigs in the Marcellus in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Each
company prepares its own annual budget and then they split
expenses.

frastructure system for future drilling locations. It runs six, eight-inch pipelines to
each horizontal well location: an oil line,
a gas line, a high-pressure gas line that it
uses for gas lift, a produced water line, and
low- and high-chloride recycled produced
water lines for its frac operations. Its soonto-be completed "super" recycling center
will be capable of processing and storing
370,000 barrels of treated produced water, which can be piped across the field to
various frac jobs.
The company also has drilled 50, 700foot Santa Rosa nonpotable frac water supply wells, Craft mentions. He says Santa
Rosa water is high in sulfates and iron, and
requires treatment prior to being used as
frac water. During treatment, the sulfate
and iron are removed from the brackish
Santa Rosa water, essentially eliminating
the need for using any potable water, Craft
says.
"Although our infrastructure system
cost $100 million to install, it reduces our
well cost by about $1 million a well by not
having to buy and truck potable frac water to the well site, as well as trucking and
disposal of the frac fluid post-completion,"
he reports. "In simple terms, after 100
wells, the system is completely paid for."
Approach had drilled more than 600
gas wells in the area before it started its
90 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

horizontal Wolfcamp program. Craft notes
that a significant portion of it daily gas production is coming from these legacy gas
wells. Approach uses some of this gas to
fuel its horizontal gas-lift system. "By having a centralized gas-lift system, we are
able to bring wells on line faster, maximize
flow rates, and lower monthly operating
expense" he remarks.
Craft is quick to point out, however, that
there is not a good correlation between initial production rates and ultimate recoveries in Wolfcamp horizontal wells. He
says wells that IP at 1,000 boe/d or more
often will have the same EURs as wells
that IP at 600 boe/d.
According to Craft, the industry has
drilled more than 2,000 horizontal Wolfcamp wells in the southern Midland
Basin, and he says he continues to study
everyone's wells along with his own.
"Our 135 producing Crockett County
horizontal Wolfcamp wells compare favorably with wells with similar lateral lengths
located in Reagan, Upton and Irion counties. There is a big difference between play
economics and P10/best well economics,"
Craft maintains.
He says one unanticipated problem is
that nearby wells have to be shut in during fracturing jobs because of increased
water in the adjacent laterals, which

Longer Laterals
CONSOL Energy Inc., which has a
150-year history of coal mining and natural gas exploration in the Appalachian
Basin, and Houston-based Noble Energy
Inc. entered a joint venture in September
2011 to begin developing the Marcellus
Shale.
"It gave us another core area," says
Chip Rimer, vice president of U.S. onshore
operations for Noble, which had been active in the Gulf of Mexico as well as in the
Niobrara in Colorado's Denver-Julesburg
Basin.
"Our experience with liquids in the DJ Basin made us attractive to CONSOL,
which was mostly drilling dry gas at that
time," Rimer speculates. "It is a unique operation, but it has been a win for both companies."
The two companies have four rigs operating in the Marcellus in Pennsylvania
and West Virginia. Rimer says they each
do annual budgets and then split expenses 50-50.
CONSOL and Noble have focused on
maximizing recovery, and the results
have been staggering, suggests Craig
Neal, CONSOL's vice president of Northern Appalachian Gas Operations. "We entered first quarter 2014 producing 470 million cubic feet equivalent a day," he reports.
"We exited the third quarter with a production rate of 925 MMcfe/d."
He adds that the joint venture anticipated exceeding 1.0 billion cubic feet equivalent a day by year's end.
Neal attributes that growth to longer laterals and the joint venture's reduced stage
cluster spacing (RSCS) program. The
venture's average lateral length in 2014
was 8,900 feet.
"We increased our lateral length by 46
percent over 2013," Neal observes, "but we
were able to nearly double our EURs from
7.1 billion cubic feet equivalent to 14.1

American Oil and Gas Reporter - January 2015

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