American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2023 - 56

SpecialReport: Permian Basin Playmakers
drill any time, " he adds.
While a number of companies are targeting
the San Andres on the Central
Basin Platform in Andrews County, Schick
claims PEDEVCO is the only one doing
horizontal drilling in the legacy San
Andres fields on the Northwest Shelf.
" We are using a cross-linked gel frac, "
Matador Resources is piloting a " horseshoe " lateral design in the Delaware Basin. The well
architecture has a U-shaped lateral that drills out one mile before making a 180-degree turn
to drill back toward the rig. The design effectively doubles the length of a one-mile lateral.
closed its acquisition of Advance Energy
Partners Holdings on April 12 for approximately
$1.6 billion that added over
100 million barrels of oil and natural gas
reserves to the company's 357 MMboe
of oil and natural gas reserves. According
to Foran, the acquisition added 18,500
net acres in the core of the northern
Delaware Basin, most of which is adjacent
to the company's best acreage.
Matador Resources now has 150,000
net acres in the Delaware Basin. Average
production was 106,644 boe/d (58,941
bbl/d of oil), according to the company's
first-quarter earnings report.
Northwest Shelf
Houston-based PEDEVCO Corp. is
targeting the San Andres formation on
the Northwest Shelf in a remote area of
Chaves and Roosevelt counties in New
Mexico.
" This area had 40-acre-spaced vertical
wells drilled in the 1950's and '60s, "
explains PEDEVCO President, J. Douglas
Schick. " Most of the San Andres in the
Permian Basin, especially on the Central
Basin Platform, was drilled on 5-10acre
spacing. So, what we are doing is
down spacing with 20-acre spaced horizontal
wells. "
The San Andres formation is relatively
shallow at about 4,500 feet, and PEDEVCO
is drilling one-mile laterals. " It is
not deep enough to push more than 1.25
miles, " he relates.
PEDEVCO has 31,000 acres over
three fields on the Northwest Shelf:
56 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER
Chaveroo, Chaveroo Northeast and the
Milnesand field. It has 14 total horizontal
San Andres wells and has drilled 10
horizontal San Andres wells in Chaveroo
and one in Chaveroo NE to date. It acquired
three horizontal San Andres wells
in Chaveroo NE in 2019. The company's
focus, however, is strictly on its
Chaveroo acreage at the moment, although
Schick says drilling there is
currently on hold while it is using $16
million in capital expenditures to drill
or participate in the drilling of 14 wells
in the Denver-Julesburg Basin in Colorado
and has another 11 wells it plans
to drill or participate in later this year
in the D-J Basin.
" We also have permits for three more
wells in the Chaveroo Field that we can
he offers. " It is not a real big frac at
about 500-700 pounds per foot. When
we open a new wellbore, we are just
trying to stimulate everything in the near
wellbore main pay zone and stay away
from the lower zones because the San
Andres can produce a lot of water. "
Schick says the average well has
300,000-350,000 barrels of estimated ultimate
oil recovery.
" But the 30-day initial production
rates can be volatile, " he continues. " We
had one well with an IP of 500 bbl/d and
a 30-day IP of 450 bbl/d. On average,
these wells peak at 250-400 bbl/d for 30
days. They flatten out after a year. They
decline ~92% in the first year and about
8% percent per year after that, with all of
our wells producing around 40 bbl/d after
a few years. "
Managing water is one of the biggest
challenges in drilling these San Andres
wells, according to Schick. When the
wells first come on line, he says they use
electric submersible pumps.
" These wells produce ~90% water, so
when they drop to 500 bbl/d of total
fluid, we put them on rod pumps, which
are cheaper to operate, " he explains. " It
usually takes about two years to switch
On the Northwest Shelf in
Chaves and Roosevelt
counties in New Mexico,
PEDEVCO Corp. is drilling
horizontal wells on 20-acre
spacing into the San Andres
formation. Given the
San Andres formation's
relatively shallow depth of
4,500 feet, the wells are
designed with one-mile laterals.

American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2023

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