By Al Pickett Special Correspondent Independent operators continue to define and then re-define "best practices" to optimize well performance and bottom-line economics in America's horizontal resource plays. The goal is to continually refine drilling and completion techniques to get the biggest bang for the buck invested in each new well, while also steadily increasing reserve recovery rates and flattening annual decline curves over time. From the Wolfcamp in West Texas to the Marcellus in Appalachia, two nearly universal trends emerging from that effort are extended lateral lengths and greater proppant volumes in the stimulated interval. Eclipse Resources Corp. is setting the pace on both fronts in its Utica and Marcellus operations, drilling the longest laterals to date onshore North America and setting records for the total amount of proppant pumped (and total number of stages completed) in a month by a single fracturing crew PART THREE MARCH 2017 43