Drilling the unconventional Shale focus shifts to increasing IP rates, EUR

摘要

While the near-mythical acceleration in new shale-directed drilling technologies continues to spawn considerably more wells, with fewer rigs, some now question whether operators may be drilling too fast for their own good. The same well-documented technical breakthroughs that allow 20 or more wells, with ever-increasing lateral lengths, to be constructed quickly, and often repetitively, from a single pad, may also be contributing to reserves being left behind the pipe, they say. Even the primary developers of geosteering, rotary steerable systems (RSS), MWD/LWD packages, and similar technologies that helped germinate the remarkable escalation in unconventional E&P, contend that the hetrogeneity and complexity of many shale plays do not necessarily lend themselves to the wholesale, factory-style approach to drilling that they helped create.