American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2017 - 68

SpecialReport: Permian Basin Profile
mations in the Wildfire, Azalea and
Powell fields.
"During the quarter, we continued
ramping up activity in our core Midland
Basin acreage. Now we are beginning to
see significant cost benefits associated
with our drilling program in the area,"
Christmann relates.

Reeves County
Perhaps no place better reflects what
is happening in the Permian Basin than
Reeves County. In addition to the new
Alpine High discovery, the county's
northern half has become a magnet for
activity. With 57 rigs drilling in March,
Reeves County was home to the most
operating rigs in any single U.S. county.
Only a few years ago, Reeves County
output stood at 3,000 bbl/d, reports Bill
Fairhurst, president of Riverford Exploration
LLC. Now, he says, Reeves County produces more than 120,000 bbl/d. "That will
continue to go up," he forecasts. "This
has been a fun project to be a part of."
Fairhurst takes no credit for the Wolfcamp's growth, noting that operators
have drilled in that zone for years, but he
does suggest he has influenced the area's
ascension in another way. "I did open
the economic development of the Wolfbone in the southern Delaware Basin,"
he claims.

Riverford, which began in 2003, employs a model that focuses two-thirds of
its business on oil and gas investments
and one-third on consulting work, Fairhurst
says, but the Wolfbone experimentation
originated with a different company. He
recounts working for Eagle Oil & Gas
when a geologist colleague expressed interest in drilling into the sandstones underlying the Wolfcamp Shale. "We drilled
three wells in 2009 and 2010," Fairhurst
recalls. "We drilled the Pistola well early
in 2010, 17 miles south of the Sheldon
well. They both flowed oil into the pits.
It looked like a fracture 17 miles apart.
We then drilled the Bell No. 1 well that
also put oil in the pit. It was all about silica-rich shale."
According to Fairhurst, Eagle went
on to drill 24 vertical wells in the Wolfbone, a commingling of the Wolfcamp
and Bone Spring intervals. Riverford then
drilled the first horizontal well in the
Wolfbone. By 2012, he says, the proportion of horizontal to vertical Wolfbone
drilling was about even.
"There is about 3,000 feet of vertical
saturated section in the Wolfcamp and
Third Bone Spring," he explains. "We
ran spinners to understand what zone
was producing the most."
The upshot, he says, is a toss-up between
the Wolfcamp A and Wolfcamp B.

Noble Energy has announced
plans to accelerate activity on
its recently acquired Delaware
Basin acreage and run three
rigs by year-end. Combined with
the rigs already running on
Noble Energy's acreage, the
company says it should be operating six Delaware Basin rigs
by the beginning of 2018.

68 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

In the meantime, Eagle sold out to
Comstock Resources, which then sold to
Rosetta Resources. Noble Energy bought
Rosetta, and still operates in Reeves
County under the Rosetta name. Riverford,
a nonoperator, kept its position in the
play through all the changes. Fairhurst
says Riverford has 3,000 scattered gross
acres focused south of the Pecos River
in Reeves County. Riverford has participated in 20 Wolfbone wells, he adds.
Riverford helped introduce the play's
first modest fracture stimulations, he notes.
Now, Fairhurst contrasts, Noble is pumping
90-100 barrels of fluid a minute with
4,500 pounds of proppant per linear foot
on two-mile laterals. He says the wells
are making 85 percent oil and 15 percent
gas. "We are getting $9 for the tailgate
gas when you add the NGLs back in,"
Fairhurst adds. "It is very rich gas."
Since the Wolfcamp is about 2,000
feet deeper in the Delaware Basin, its
steeper drilling costs are offset somewhat
by the better pressure. Because of that
pressure, Fairhurst indicates, the operations
are able to flow the well up the casing
for six-nine months before the well requires a pump. He adds that water lines
and gas lines have been trenched to each
well.
Fairhurst says one of his recent emphases is trying to arrange deals for operators to explore the Woodford zone,
which he deems the source for all Permian
Basin intervals.
"We have put together several projects," he reports. "QEP is drilling its second Woodford well in Winkler County,
Tx. The Woodford has been tried many
times, but it really never has produced
economic quantities until the recent efforts
of Apache and others."
Delaware Expansion
Noble Energy's other deals include
April's acquisition of Clayton Williams
Energy Inc. The acquired assets include
71,000 contiguous net acres in the core
of the southern Delaware Basin adjacent
to Noble Energy's original Reeves County
holdings, an additional 100,000 net acres
in other areas of the Permian Basin and
more than 300 miles of oil, natural gas
and produced water gathering pipelines.
The company says production on the
assets totals approximately 10,000 boe/d.
"Our plan to rapidly increase development of these highly prolific Delaware
Basin assets will be a major contributor
to Noble Energy's leading U.S. onshore

American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2017

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