Permian Basin Operators Spill the Beans on Latest Techniques
Authors: Pallanich Jennifer 
Published: December 2024

The oil patch has few secrets.

“My career experiences taught me that there are no secrets in the oil field, and if you find something that works, good luck keeping it secret for more than a few weeks before people finally figure it out,” Lance Robertson, former Endeavor Energy Resources CEO, said during SPE’s Permian Basin Energy Conference (PBEC) in Midland, Texas.

While much may be kept proprietary, talking and sharing is common. In October, operators came together at the PBEC to share how they are working to better produce the basin’s shale reservoirs.

Jye Collins, Texas asset manager, Midland upstream with Chevron, said during a plenary focused on the Midland Basin that there “really are no secrets” in the Permian.

“Everyone knows what’s going on pretty quickly in the Permian in the Midland Basin,” he said.

“They say imitation is the best form of flattery, and I say Midland’s full of a lot of flattery because everybody’s looking over their shoulder to see what everyone’s doing.”

One of Chevron’s major focuses in the area is on keeping the Midland Basin going through the next evolution of west Texas energy.

The operator’s development strategy has evolved as the industry has learned what does and doesn’t work across the Permian. Those learnings, he noted, have led to more efficiencies.

“Efficiency has been a major part of the Midland Basin story, a major part of Chevron’s story, whether we’re talking about feet per day, dollar per foot unit, OPEX, efficiency has been a big component,” he said.

One efficiency, he said, has been moving from simulfrac operations to triple fracture, or trimulfrac, operations. Chevron is using triple fracturing with some of its fleets, he said.

But efficiencies can compound to present a different issue: burning through inventory more quickly, which, he said, is one of the challenges associated with being successful.

Marc Lemons, asset manager for Midland Basin with ConocoPhillips, said during the same plenary that the operator has been using multivariate analysis to help model where there has been drilling “trouble time” in the past to become more predictive about potential future issues.

He said the company has also seen an improvement in drilling operations by bringing people together in the same location so they’re all working with the same data.

“We also have a data, or a digital information drilling information center, that we created where we remotely control most of our rigs. We have operation personnel, geoscientists, engineers, directional drillers, all working together with real‑time data. And we’ve seen, I think, close to a 10% improvement on our rate of penetration because of that,” he said.

Kyle Coldiron, vice president of new well delivery at Vital Energy, said in the same plenary that the company is working to boost its inventory in the Permian Basin.

“Vital has always been known as a company that is kind of light on inventory, and so our BD (business development) strategy directly tries to address that,” he said.

One of Vital’s approaches to do so has been to drill horseshoe wells, or U‑turn wells.