American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2016 - 54

SpecialReport: Horizontal & Innovative Drilling
With a total measured depth of 27,048
feet, the Purple Hayes lateral spans 18,544
feet, yet was drilled in only 17.6 days in
a single bottom-hole assembly run, Hulburt reveals. Moreover, he says, Eclipse
Resources completed the well in 23.5 days,
placing a plug-and-perf hydraulic fracturing stage every 150 feet along the 3.5 milelong lateral, averaging 5.3 stages each day.
When all the work was done, Hulburt says
the total drilling and completion cost
came in at $854 per foot of lateral, shattering any previous industry benchmark in
the Utica Shale.

foot lateral in 15 percent less time than it
took just to drill a 6,000- or 7,000-foot lateral two years ago.
"We achieved every objective we laid
out for our first superlateral," Hulburt exults. "The entire Purple Hayes project was
executed almost flawlessly. The drilling
and completion operations went pretty
much exactly as designed from spud to
flowback."
Superlateral Takeoff
While the Purple Hayes 1H is the culmination of Eclipse Resources' years of ex-

"This is our first superlateral, but it will not
be the last. We plan to spud a superlateral in
the dry gas area in the third quarter, and are
looking at a couple in early 2017 in the wet
gas part of the play that will be even longer
than Purple Hayes."
BEN HULBURT
Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO
Eclipse Resources Corp.

While the technical achievements associated with constructing the well are impressive, Hulburt emphasizes the fiscal rationale behind Purple Hayes. "It represents
a step-change in the cost structure of Utica wells," he declares. "We are sold on superlaterals."
The numbers reveal the magnitude of
the improvement since Eclipse Resources
drilled its first Utica well, the Tippens No.
6HS with a 5,850-foot lateral. Hulburt says
the company's first 10 Utica wells (drilled
in 2013-14) had an average lateral length
of 6,270 feet and took 49 days apiece to
drill to total depth. The aggregate total cost
was $2,400 per foot of completed lateral.
In contrast, he reports, Purple Hayes
has three times the reservoir interval of
those first 10 horizontals at one-third the
cost per foot of completed lateral, and
Eclipse drilled and completed the 18,50054 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

perience in the Utica, as well as a concerted internal extended-reach research and development effort, Hulburt suggests it is
merely the takeoff point for what the company envisions for the future: field development scenarios in both its dry gas and
liquids-rich acreage based on well pads
with two-three superlaterals, and perhaps
one day, even multiple superlaterals from
a single vertical pilot hole.
"This is our first superlateral, but it will
not be the last," he vows. "We plan to spud
a superlateral in the dry gas area in the third
quarter, and are looking at a couple in early 2017 in the wet gas part of the play that
will be even longer than Purple Hayes."
The business case for superlaterals is
simple: spread drilling and completion
costs over as many lateral feet of stimulated reservoir volume as possible, according to Hulburt. "Our objective is to get to-

tal well costs down to where the condensate portion of our acreage becomes very
attractive at oil prices in the mid $50s and
higher," he says.
Initial production from Purple Hayes
is being restricted to 5 million cubic feet
of dry gas and 1,200 barrels of condensate
a day to manage pressure drawdown, but
Hulburt says all early signs point to promising long-term productivity and reserves
recovery.
"We probably could open the well
more, but it is exceeding our projections
already," he states, noting that the ability
to attain similar recovery rates to shorterlateral offset wells will be the ultimate
gauge of Purple Hayes' success.
"The final test is recovery per foot," he
says.
Eclipse Resources steadily increased
lateral lengths from about 6,000 feet in its
first well to an average of 7,000 feet in
2014 and 9,000 feet in 2015, with its
longest lateral prior to drilling the Purple
Hayes stretching nearly 14,000 feet. "As
we moved to longer laterals, we saw no evidence of degradation in the recovery
per foot of completed lateral," Hulburt
says. "That may not be true in other
reservoirs, but it appears to be true in the
Utica. It will take time to get the answer
on recovery, but we are excited about the
performance to date of our first superlateral."
Rising To The Challenge
Pushing the boundaries of extendedreach well architectures obviously introduces additional operational risks. According to Hulburt, however, Eclipse Resources' Utica experience and the expertise of its in-house drilling and completion
team gave management the confidence that
it could drill a lateral efficiently and safely to a distance roughly equivalent to the
maximum altitude for Cessna's latest-generation turboprop.
"We did not jump right out to 18,500

American Oil and Gas Reporter - July 2016

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