Exxon Is Drilling Some Long Horizontal Shale Oil Wells

Exxon recently completed “Bakken” wells in North Dakota that extend 3 miles. Exxon The world’s biggest oil explorer by market value finished four wells in North Dakota’s Bakken region that extends horizontally for 3 miles (4.8 kilometers), Barclays Plc analyst Paul Cheng said in a research note after meeting Exxon executives, it’s closing in on the 4-mile mark. 

The well encountered 75 feet of “high-quality, oil-bearing sandstone,” Jeff Woodbury, ExxonMobil’s vice president said.

  • Plans to increase capex spending to $25 billion
  • Increasing Permian rig count, drilling 3-mile lateral on new wells
  • $160 million impact of hurricane

Exxon also plans to go deeper in the Permian Basin as it ramps up activity and works to satiate a growing appetite for more rapid value creation across the basin’s entire integrated value chain.

Exxon also intends to test 3-mile lateral wells in the Delaware Basin with an aim of reducing unit development cost to $5 per barrel of oil equivalent (boe) from $7 per boe.

Expect more sand and more truckers in need.

During the quarter, ExxonMobil announced it added 22,000 acres since May to its Permian Basin portfolio through a series of acquisitions and acreage trades. Located in the Delaware and Midland Basins, the new acreage adds over 400 million oil-equivalent barrels to the company’s existing Permian Basin resource base of 6 billion oil-equivalent barrels.

The corporation has identified emerging trends such as increasing estimates of available natural
gas supplies and ongoing reductions in costs of supply for natural gas. In the fourth quarter of 2017,
the corporation will incorporate the impacts of these trends and the resulting lower price outlook in
its annual planning and budgeting cycle.

4 thoughts on “Exxon Is Drilling Some Long Horizontal Shale Oil Wells”

  1. “Exxon spokesman Jeff Woodbury said the company will drill its first three-mile-long horizontal well in the Permian Basin by year end, taking lessons from its operations in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota. Over the next decade, he said, the Permian will underpin the company’s future production growth a 45-percent annual growth rate.”

    That’s impressive, Time to buy some of that Exxon stock!

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