Industry Supplier of the Year: Gary C. Evans of Magnum Hunter Resources Corp.
Posted on 10/03/2014 4:43:05 PM PDT by ckilmer
Industry Supplier of the Year: Gary C. Evans of Magnum Hunter Resources Corp.
So far, natural gas drillers have only dipped their toes into West Virginia’s Utica shale play. It’s safe to say some might dive in head first now.
Magnum Hunter Resources Corp. announced results of a well on its Stewart Winland pad in Tyler County, West Virginia, just east of Marietta. It’s a certified monster, the biggest in the Utica shale play so far and, the company says, one of the biggest in U.S. shale, period.
The 1300U well was placed in production last week, and produced 46.5 million cubic feet of natural gas a day.
Production from the Utica shale keeps expanding. This time, it’s south and east of its mainstay in eastern Ohio. A few weeks ago, Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s results in north-central Pennsylvania showed potential for the play even farther east and north.
Gary Evans, the CEO of Magnum Hunter, predicted the well’s success in June, as I reported.
“We think this well is on the equivalent of the Rice well,” Evans told CNBC host Jim Cramer. He was referencing Pennsylvania-based Rice Energy Inc., (NYSE:RICE) which at the time had the top-producing natural gas well, at 41.7 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, in Belmont County.
Magnum Hunter is an early adopter of tapping West Virginia’s Utica play. This well was only the second drilled in the state; Chevron Corp. (NYSE:CVX) drilled the first in Marshall County earlier this year.
The news is good for Houston-based Magnum Hunter (NYSE:MHR), which has 200,000 acres in the Utica and Marcellus plays in Ohio and West Virginia, 43,000 of which overlap in so-called “stacked pays,” of which the company also is an early adopter, as I reported last week.
“We believe that this new discovery on the Stewart Winland pad announced today represents the greatest flow rate and one of the highest sustained flowing casing pressures of any Utica well drilled in the entire play of Ohio and West Virginia,” Evans said in a statement, where he called the well a “monster.”
“Additionally, it is one of the highest flow rate gas wells ever reported in any shale play located in the U.S.,” he said.
One caveat on the well: It’s almost entirely dry gas. The well is about 98 percent methane and just 1.52 percent ethane. Ethane is the valuable liquid that Gulf Coast petrochemical facilities need and is leading to much of the pipeline activity taking fossil fuels from Appalachia to the Gulf Coast.
The company said three other wells on the Stewart Winland pad have tapped into the Marcellus shale play and are ready for sales.
Yeah, you might be right. But the pubbies sometimes get control of the governorship in New York. A republican governor could make it happen over the protests of NYC dems.
lol
Wow! And wasn’t it announced last week that there’s been a big discovery in Utah?
...............
can you find that article?
I looked without success.
“Additionally, it is one of the highest flow rate gas wells ever reported in any shale play located in the U.S.,” he said.
What are flow rates for other wells that are considered enormous? Can a NG well be considered a "gusher"?
One caveat on the well: It’s almost entirely dry gas. The well is about 98 percent methane and just 1.52 percent ethane ...
I heard that many of PNR CO wells were too wet, decreasing profitability. Is dry gas easier to process, and therefore more profitable? and is leading to much of the pipeline activity taking fossil fuels from Appalachia to the Gulf Coast.
Pipeline to the Gulf Coast? Shouldn't economics pull the NG to the Northeast, or is it a processing bottleneck? The company said three other wells on the Stewart Winland pad have tapped into the Marcellus shale play and are ready for sales.
Very nice. Multiple wells drilled from a single pad. Should decrease the cost of per-well drilling.
When the well is drilled they rig down.
The frac moves in and they frac the well . They have many zones and they use Wireline to set a plug. Then they fire guns, projectiles through the casing, pump their solution, set a plug , fire the guns, pump their solution....
They do many zones
.I worked on well that had twenty two zones. Twenty two plugs.
Then the work over rig comes in. A snubbing unit is employed on wells with this much pressure. The pulling unit starts running 2 3/8s or 2 7/8 s tubing down the hole. The snubbing unit has sets of jaws on it and a round rubber basket lined with steel fingers.
The first 30 foot and pipe with a drill bit x nipple, xn nipple and an inside blow out preventer is jacked down the hole. The pressure is so great that when you open the well the pressure would shoot the tubing right out.
The snubbing unit with the basket seals the well and allows the tubing to be jacked into the well.
The combination of pulling unit ( work over rig ) and the snubbing unit work to gether they run 285 joints into the hole on average in Pinedale WYO. The work over rig drills out the plugs left by the frac .
Here is were the flowtester comes in. The drill make cutting come free and they come out with the flow of gas. It is a challenge to keep the flow going with the particles coming up.
You can plug up the line and stop the flow. You could get the bit stuck in the hole .
My feeling was I wanted to work on the wells with the most pressure.
If there is a break in the high pressure line even a pin hole of pressure coming out can sever appendages
thanks
BFL
Can one of you help me understand some of the article?
“Additionally, it is one of the highest flow rate gas wells ever reported in any shale play located in the U.S.,” he said.
What are flow rates for other wells that are considered enormous? Can a NG well be considered a “gusher”?”
Beware of this report.
I see a typical over-hyped well test here. The original article below was changed by the author of the bizjournal article here. http://www.magnumhunterresources.com/pressreleases.html
Note that the original article says the well produced at a rate of 46.5 million cubic feet of natural gas a day. The bizjournal author reported this as simply 46.6 million cubic feet of natural gas a day. Big diff of a daily rate and actual production for a day.
One can take a one hour rate test and extrapolate to 24 hours and grossly exaggerate the amount of hydrocarbons a well is capable of. Very common to do when their is an agenda to be made.
Suggest this is not a representation that is valid, and is an attempt to “steer” people towards believing something by overhyping.
I work the oil and gas industry. In the shale world, we only take the actual production of a month of a production and report the average daily rate over that month as the Initial rate of a well.
Beware.
My feeling was I wanted to work on the wells with the most pressure.
..........
The article mentions that they are planning on drilling three more wells in the same formation,
That's a good one!
Thank you. :)
Wet gas, gas with more natural gas liquids, are far more re profitable than dry gas wells. The liquids sell for much more than the methane.
I found a Rig Zone article that supports the description, more technical than a financial article.
Sabo: Talent Helps Deep Well Services to Complete Utica Monster Well
http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/135298/Sabo_Talent_Helps_Deep_Well_Services_to_Complete_Utica_Monster_Well
During the completion process, DWS utilized a state-of-the-art standalone snubbing unit, with a 285,000-pound pull rate. The combination of the best equipment and the experience gained during the completion process should prove helpful for the crew in establishing itself in the challenging formation, Sabo said, since wells in the Utica generally exceed pressures found in the Marcellus shale play.
What I know for a fact is that the best shale producers are those which encounter natural fractures.
If one can drill into and complete from one abnormally large fracture, and, since the permeability of a fracture is almost infinite, one can achieve extraordinarily large flowrates for a brief period of time until that fracture depletes, and the only rates then are getting hydrocarbons out of the matrix, which might be over a million times less permeable.
I recall an instance in the 1980s when I was involved with drilling a horizontal oil well in the Austin Chalk. We attempted to land the horizontal well in the Chalk but could not make it through the turn. The bit dropped over 10’ from a huge vug in well.
We fought the well for a week to overcome the pressure from flowing oil and gas. After that period, and 29,000 barrels of oil later, we decided to just leave the well where it was at.
Time will tell.
I’ve seen recommendations for new mineral lease owners:
1) Don’t spend any of the first 3 months checks.
2) Only spend half of the next 6 months checks.
3) Then you have a clue, but only a clue, what future checks might be.
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