American Oil and Gas Reporter - March 2018 - 52

SpecialReport: Permian Powerhouse
Cube Development
Encana is running five rigs across
118,000 acres in the heart of the Midland
Basin in Texas' Midland, Martin, Upton,
Howard and Glasscock counties, details
Jeff Balmer, the company's vice president and general manager of southern
operations.
"We see the Permian as the place to
be," he relates. "We have a portfolio of
options, but the Permian Basin is certainly
one of our crown jewels."
According to Balmer, Encana is a
leader in what it calls "cube development,"
a strategy of optimizing drilling, completion and production in the stacked
pays throughout the company's leasehold,
Balmer relates. "Cube development is
multiple wells, top-to-bottom and leftto-right," he explains. "There is a lot of
efficiency in that overall system."
For example, Encana is drilling sixwell pads featuring six different targets
stacked on top of each other-only a few
hundred feet offset-in what Balmer calls
a "skinny" vertical stack. He says the
company has targeted the Upper Lower
Spraberry, the Lower Spraberry, the Upper
Wolfcamp A, the Lower Wolfcamp A,
the Upper Wolfcamp B and the Lower

Wolfcamp B off the same pad.
"We bring two rigs to one surface location, and each drills three wells," he
describes. "Then, two frac crews come
and work simultaneously. We follow that
with two or three drill-out crews at the
same time. It looks like a little city with
everyone working at the same time."
Balmer dubs it SimOps, or simultaneous operations, which Encana first pioneered in the Piceance Basin. "It is
doing multiple things at the same time,"
he says. "We have done it in other basins,
too. We do a rigorous safety assessment
before we get started."
He adds that Encana sketches out the
entire operation, making sure every detail
is preplanned, even down to traffic control.
Balmer claims SimOps offer many advantages.
"The two commodities that are most
important are sand and water," he explains.
"We can use multiple million-barrel water
resource hubs, or holding ponds, that
allow us to hold the produced water and
then recycle it for fracturing. We don't
have to buy the water or pay to dispose
of it. It also gives us a consistent source
of sand. We need a large quantity of
sand, and trucks can turn on the same
road and bring the sand to the same loca-

Encana has applied lessons
from the company's simultaneous operations in the Piceance
Basin to its Permian Basin projects. The company says meticulous planning allows it to
undertake multiple activities in
an almost seamless process.

52 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

tion. It is simply more efficient in terms
of the whole supply chain."
Encana monitors production data from
each well to determine how the wells in
the cube development are interacting.
Balmer says they monitor the pressure,
fluid performance, water cut and gas-tooil ratio to understand how the wells
relate to each other.
"Density, both spacing and stacking,
definitely has an effect on the overall
performance," he points out. "You want
to get the optimal amount of production,
which means you have to have the right
number of wells. In some areas, it may
take eight wells to drill the development.
In other areas, it can be seven wells. It
also can depend on the existing wells in
the area."
Reservoir Characterization
Balmer lightheartedly quips that Encana's Permian wells benefit from the
fact that everyone involved in a project
reports to him. From drillers to production
engineers, geologists to everyone else,
he says all are important members of the
same team, a mindset critical to the cube
development's success.
One of the most important factors in
improving recovery rates is putting the
drill bit in the right spot, he emphasizes.
Balmer says Encana uses seismic surveys,
but finding the sweet spot in which to
drill is more complicated than simply
reading seismic data.
"We also use proprietary analytics
data, core data, fracture diagnostics and
logging information in forming a visual
image of the subsurface," he continues.
"That way we target better wells, making
sure we keep the wellbore in the right
path. We can put the bit in a 10-foot-by10-foot window. That is pretty mindboggling when you consider we are
drilling 8,000 feet deep and then 6,00010,000 feet sideways."
He goes on to report that Encana's lateral lengths average 8,000-10,000 feet.
"We have drilled beyond 11,000 feet,"
Balmer relates, "and we believe strongly
that a 10,000-foot lateral is better than an
8,000-foot one. I know some companies
have drilled longer laterals, and we are
evaluating that, but we are taking a waitand-see approach. Longer laterals offer

American Oil and Gas Reporter - March 2018

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