American Oil and Gas Reporter - April 2019 - 112

ConventionCoverage: Ohio Oil & Gas Association
"I don't need to tell you how innovation
can suddenly breathe life into long-forgotten towns. It is amazing to think how
much the Appalachian Basin has changed
in just over 10 years," the vice president
marveled. "In 2008, Ohio, Pennsylvania
and West Virginia produced 2 percent of
our nation's natural gas; today, they pro-

duce 27 percent of the natural gas produced
in the United States of America."
Ohio is home to more than 65,000
wells producing 26 million barrels of oil
and 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas annually, Pence noted, with those wells supporting 200,000 well-paying jobs in Ohio.
"Everywhere you look, confidence is

back. I sense it in this room. Jobs are
coming back. In a word, America is back.
And, we are just getting started," Pence
told OOGA. "Thanks to you, despite all
the talk of peak oil and energy shortages
just a few short years ago, the Utica and
Marcellus shales are producing such an
abundance. It is incredible to watch." ❒

Communications Crucial To Sim Ops
COLUMBUS, OH.-Simultaneous operations, where production activities continue even as new drilling takes place on
a well pad, are safer and more efficient
when all parties communicate constantly,
a panel discussion at the Ohio Oil & Gas
Association's annual meeting assessed.
Panel moderator Joe Snider, production
and facilities manager at Artex Oil Company, pointed out companies and local
participants often handle the coordination
required to undertake different activities
in close proximity, which means managing
component pursuits with the potential to
affect each other.
Communication is crucial to managing
sim ops, asserted Joe Starkey, director of
operations at Ascent Resources.
"We have the crew leads, the supervisors
over the snubbing units or the construction
crew working together all day controlling
traffic, sharing areas of the pad where
they need to work," he described. "Ascent
looks at sim ops on our sites to facilitate

construction as a completely separate
group from completion work. They are
very independent of each other, but come
together to use the same space at the same
time. We want to mitigate all risks associated
with those activities.
Snider said Artex had its lease operators
meet with service crew leaders before
the simultaneous operations began, to get
everyone on the same page. He indicated
his company's identified priorities were
preplanning, communications and monitoring. He noted that the Ohio Division
of Natural Resources had been working
for the past year on simultaneous operation
policies, with the goal of cutting permitting
times while bridging some reported communication gaps.
Joe Baker, operations manager with
Encino Energy, recalled that when he examined Chesapeake Energy's asset practices
in Louisiana's Haynesville play for possible
application in Ohio, the typical 500-by500 foot pads were significantly larger

Participating in a panel discussion on technical considerations for simultaneous
operations are, from left, panel moderator Joe Snider, production and facilities manager
at Artex Oil Company; Joe Starkey, director of operations at Ascent Resources; and Joe
Baker, operations manager with Encino Energy. The discussion was part of the Ohio Oil
& Gas Association's annual meeting, held March 6-8 in Columbus, Oh.

112 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

than their Appalachian Basin counterparts.
He noted that gave crews more flexibility
when working on different operations.
Other lessons learned in working the
Haynesville included separating wells
when designing a pad, which creates
room for continuing production while
working the nonoperating wells, and using
equipment such as wellhead cages to
protect equipment when rigs and vehicles
are moving on the site, he offered.
"We shut everything in and depressurized everything before the rigs arrived
and while the rigs were going up, the
wells were incapable of flowing in the
event someone hit something or a flowline
was cut," Baker said. "Once we were
rigged up, the production team would
come back and bring the wells back.
Being able to produce while drilling represented 20-30 days of production."
Snider reported Artex was researching
how wells reacted to being shut in for
extended periods, adding the company
had seen some negative production impacts
when shut-in wells returned to service.
Ascent Resources considers preplanning the best way to mitigate risks from
simultaneous operations, Starkey said.
"It would be really nice if I had thought
about coming back to this pad when I
was designing the site," he indicated.
"On most of our pads, we have to shut in
because I have to move production equipment to get the rig on location, or I
installed aboveground flow lines so I
could get the pad on line a little quicker
when we turned the first wells on. We
have disqualified ourselves from producing
some of our pads while drilling. Having
a plan from day one would be key."
Ohio Activity
Ohio has more than 50,000 wells in a
producing, stimulating or drilling status,
with at least 45,000 in the first category,
Martin Shumway said in presenting the
OOGA convention's Debrosse Memorial

American Oil and Gas Reporter - April 2019

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