Drilling Strategies,Technologies Improve Performance In High-Yield Resource Plays By Allen Gilmer and Phillip Dunning AUSTIN, TX.-As the industry has wrestled with the "new normal" of lower commodity prices and uncertainties regarding long-term forward pricing, it is hugely important to identify some of the improvements in processes and technologies that both operators and service companies are embedding into their operations. Learning best practices, lowering authorization for expenditure and operating costs, and improving per-well productivities are all foundational drivers of stay-in-the-game business practices that will improve margins when prices do finally recover. Every financial analyst call or 10Q quarterly report from publicly traded oil and gas companies states that operators have reduced their drilling costs. A large part of the savings has come from the pricing discounts that oil field service companies have made, in many cases simply to keep the lights on and their workforces in place. However, it is not only pricing concessions that have helped improve margins. Whereas the industry became monomaniacal in its focus on reducing costs, the smartest operators have focused on the entire equation and the metric of dollars they spend producing each barrel of oil or Mcf of natural gas. The range of solutions that operators and service companies have brought to the table run the gamut from enterprise-level decisions to tactics to reduce the operating costs associated with a particular asset. JULY 2017 55