For our Word to the Wise this week, we’ve done some digging into XI’s enhanced drilling database to look at this trend for longer laterals.
Each week, XI Technologies scans their unique combination of enhanced industry data to provide trends and insights that have value for professionals doing business in the WCSB. If you’d like to receive our Wednesday Word to the Wise delivered directly to your inbox, subscribe here.
Players in the Montney continue to test the boundaries of horizontal drilling as they reach further and further with their lateral sections. There was a time when a 5,000-metre well was unheard of. Today, for companies like NuVista, EnCana, and XTO, wells of 7,000 metres and more are the norm.
So, who’s been active in the Montney and how far have they been willing to go for production? All of this data is available in XI’s TourXchange – a cooperative WCSB-wide database of nearly 200,000 daily drilling (Tour) reports in digitized form. TourXchange digtal data is easily accessible with the powerful data mining, filtering, and sorting capabilities of XI’s OffsetAnalyst software. Data can be manipulated with the software, exported to Excel, or fed into visualization software for trend analysis.
Take a look at the following series of graphics generated with TourXchange data. The graphics and captions help tell the story of how Montney operators are going to greater lengths for production.
Figure 1: ~7,200 wells drilled that terminate in Montney in last 9 years
Figure 2: Montney wells are getting longer – Year over year, increasing average well depth & lateral length
Figure 3: Lateral trend – Year over year, lateral makes up more of overall well
Figure 4: Average lateral lengths of the 10 most active Montney players in 2018/19
Figure 5: Average lateral lengths in the top 10 fields for Montney drilling in 2018/19
Based on the data we’ve seen, the trend of longer well lengths and longer laterals is real. The question, of course, is “How long is too long?” Many of XI’s clients are utilizing the power of XI’s DrilllingSuite, including the TourXchange database and OffsetAnalyst software, to gain insights and answer that very question.
Would you like to know the answer? Contact XI to request a personalized demo. Free limited-time trials are available for qualified companies.