American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2016 - 56

SpecialReport: Horizontal & Innovative Drilling
Purple Hayes No. 1H
Guernsey County, Oh.
Longest lateral drilled onshore United
States
Lateral length: 18,544 feet (drilled to
TD in 17.6 days)
Total measured depth: 27,048 feet
Frac stages: 124 plug-and-perf at 150foot spacing (completed in 23.5 days)
Total drilling and completion cost =
$854/foot of lateral

Purple Hayes

Eclipse Acreage Area

Eclipse Resources' Purple Hayes No. 1H-the longest lateral ever drilled onshore the
United States-flowed first production in early May. While the technical achievements
associated with the project are impressive, the company says its first superlateral is a
step-change in the cost structure of Utica horizontal wells.

feet on our first well. We never would have
attempted such a project if we did not
know it would succeed. We have more than
200 producing Utica wells, and have
drilled extensively in both the dry gas and
condensate parts of the play," he relates.
"That experience was combined with an
R&D project that lasted several months before we decided to drill the well."
Purple Hayes 1H is the manifested response to a challenge Hulburt issued in
2015 to his Utica team, led by Vice President of Drilling and Completions Oleg
Tolmachev, who joined the company in
2014 after supervising the drilling of
more than 100 wells as Utica asset manager for Chesapeake Energy Corp.
"Given the very low oil prices at the
time, I wanted to know the feasible lateral length limit in the condensate area,
where reservoir depth is shallower and
pressures are lower than in the dry gas region," Hulburt recalls. "The team eventually determined that we could effectively
drill laterally to 22,000 feet at a vertical
reservoir depth of 6,000-7,000 feet. As we
started planning Purple Hayes, we felt very
comfortable out to 20,000 feet, but because
it was our first superlateral, we ultimately decided on a length of 18,500 feet."
56 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

He says contingency planning was integral to the upfront drilling and completion design work to eliminate potential operational "blind spots," minimize risk, and
mitigate nonproductive time. "We conducted a series of engineering exercises, thinking through anything that could possibly
go wrong and how to respond if it did go
wrong," he says. "The R&D work ran the
gamut from drilling and completion to production, and even the decision to preplan
artificial lift into the wellbore."
Yet for all the technical demands presented by the well's extraordinary length,
the final design included no equipment
stamped "Serial No. 001," Hulburt points
out. "Every piece of equipment we used
to drill, complete and produce this well
was proven. We did not have to design or
fabricate any new technology," he comments. "It was a matter of good engineering and combining several good technologies to accomplish the goals of this application."
Going forward, Hulburt says Eclipse
Resources expects it superlaterals in its dry
gas area along the West Virginia border to
average around 14,000 feet, which he says
is considerably longer than existing wells.
"The difficult parts of the play are in the

deeper, dry gas window, where pressure
gradients are 0.94 and higher. These are
the highest pressures of anything we have
seen in the Appalachian Basin, and that
limits lateral lengths to 15,000-16,000
feet."
Assuming the Purple Hayes 1H's initial performance stands up to the test of
time, Hulburt says the company's future
wells in the condensate area likely will average 20,000 feet. "Purple Hayes went extremely well, but we did learn some lessons we think will bring well costs even
a little lower on subsequent superlaterals,"
he offers.
Beating Expectations
All the upfront planning resulted in
Eclipse Resources bringing in its first superlateral under budget, with actual drilling
and completion times beating predrill
expectations. Hulburt reports a major enabler to eliminating rig time was the ability to TD the entire lateral section with a
single bit on a rotary steerable assembly.
"We expected to achieve rates of penetration comparable to our shorter laterals since the Utica is very drillable in the
southern part of the play, once you turn
horizontal and get past shallow zones that
tend to have sloughing issues," he details.
"We think rotary steerables are the only
way to drill superlaterals, but given the
length of the well, a bit trip would have
meant considerable time and expense."
After drilling the vertical pilot hole with
air, a Helmerich & Payne FlexRig™
moved on location to drill the curve and
lateral sections. Eighteen days later, with
the toe of Purple Hayes 1H more than five
miles in measured depth from the rig floor,
the Smith Bits' MDi516 matrix bit fitted
with 16-millimeter PDC cutters was
pulled from the well in an excellent dull
condition, according to Hulburt. "The
bit is sitting in our conference room. We
probably could drill another well with it,"
he quips.

American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2016