Joel, once companies move into the development mode note the lateral length and distance between laterals. For example 3000' laterals drilled 1000' apart would equate to ~ 92 acre spacing.
From what Chesapeake told me there are going to be fewer locations in the HS but much larger ones. I did the timber damage appraisal for one of theirs in western Caddo Parish, the location was 8 acres instead of the 2.7 average size for a vertical well. They are going to put those big locations right on the section line and drill into two sections from the same pad. The landman said they may drill as many as eight wells from the same location. I'm not sure if any of the other companies are doing it this way but that's Chesapeake's plan.
If they drill two wells in the same section, do the two wells hurt the production rates of each other, can somebody calculate the royalties for these two wells seperately, etc. ?
The location of the Chesapeake wells I was involved with is Sections 27 and 34 of T15 N R 16 W Caddo Parish. The landman explained to me that the advantage was that no gas pockets were missed, not to mention the advantage of not having to settle with landowners for multiple locations. The first well should be in production soon if not already and they are supposed to start drilling the second well as soon as a rig becomes available. The royalties won't be affected, it will be just like having several traditional vertical wells in a unit. But the production will be a lot higher.
Yes, two wells in a section COULD hurt production of each other, but in a unitized section, it wouldn't matter to the property owner. No matter which well the gas is extracted from, the property owners would get royalty payments from. Two wells might not produce 2 times what a single well would, but they would still produce more than a single well. In theory, they space them far enough apart that they don't interfere much with each other.
Realize that only the horizontal perforated section of the well produces gas. You can angle the "vertical" bore to get from the drilling pad site to the start of the later section such that two laterals are spaced far enough apart to not affect each other very much.
Since the depth of the laterals is 10,000 feet, you could shift the lateral 5000 feet off to the side from the surface well pad, and only add 11% to the length of the vertical bore. It wouldn't be that impractical to put one pad site at the corner of a section and drill 8 wells into each of 4 sections, drilling 32 wells on one pad. Nobody seems to be planning any superpads this extreme, but the geometry is not really that bad for doing it that way.
Looking back i thought this was interesting. To achieve this would be drilling in center of section (640) ac.? I was told recently company's utilized corners of sections. I noticed at 3rd quarter conference one company telling stockholders the game plan was still for 80 ac. spacing, with the decline rate steep after first year is this still possible to have 8 well's a section? If it was it would be a ways down the road.
Ken, 80 acre spcing is achieved by drilling 8 parallel horizontal wells in a section with 660 ft spacing between the laterals. This is is still likely as it may require 8 wells to properly drain a section.