TOMBALL, TX.-The U.S. oil and gas market remains highly fluid, with operators adjusting both to the new demands of ever-changing business dynamics and the new opportunities in both conventional and unconventional plays afforded by the steady march of technology. To demonstrate fiscal stability and longterm sustainability in unconventional reservoir development, companies are taking a number of operational and technical approaches. Many of them are obvious and involve "smart" cost control solutions, re-ranking of Tier II and III opportunities, and employing proven leadingedge drilling and completion technologies. One approach that continues to gain significant traction is targeting legacy conventional plays with the same set of technologies used during the past decade to economically develop shale gas and tight oil reservoirs. In many cases, these moderate-permeability formations were only marginally successful at the time they were first exploited with vertical wellbores. Targeting low-performing legacy plays with newer unconventional drilling and completion processes is not an entirely new concept. Probably the best examples with clear historical verification involve the most productive unconventional plays in North America. For instance, long before the Bakken's first commercial horizontal wells were drilled and completed in the Williston Basin, the conventional Middle Bakken sported vertical delineation and development activities solely focused on the sandy dolomite or dolomitic sand. Only when it became clear that stimulating the bounding shales above and/or below the Middle Bakken improved production character significantly did the massive development effort really take off. 60 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER