MORGANTOWN, W.V.–The ultimate goal in shale reservoirs is to produce wells at the highest economic rate while maintaining the integrity of the reservoir and completion, ensuring the maximum value of ...

HOUSTON–The Midland Basin is seeing an unprecedented boom in pad drilling driven by stacked pays in the Spraberry and Wolfcamp formations. Operators are targeting up to four reservoirs in one section ...

As crude oil prices continue to climb, South Texas operators are zeroing in on new horizons in the Eagle Ford Shale and revisiting a formation once thought to be an industry classic: the Austin Chalk.

HOUSTON–Well bore ballooning or breathing during drilling has become a greater challenge in horizontal resource plays. Ballooning is a formation anomaly whereby pumped fluids’ circulating friction ...

TULSA–The Granite Wash is a large unconventional play stretching across the southwest Anadarko Basin in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma. Although it has been developed for decades using vertical ...

DENVER–In tight oil plays such as the Niobrara, Bakken and Eagle Ford, multiwell pads with four or more high-volume horizontal wells–often producing multiphase liquid and gas streams–require ...

ELENA MELCHERT is a petroleum engineer and the director of the Upstream Oil & Gas Research Division in DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy. She joined DOE in 1985, and has extensive experience in upstream ...

LAGUNA BEACH, CA.–Drilling fluids technology and best practices continue to evolve in step with the industry’s relentless quest to optimize drilling performance in all types of geology, operating ...

HOUSTON–Even with the unprecedented and ongoing success of plays such as the Bakken, Eagle Ford, Marcellus and Wolfcamp, the industry has only scratched the surface of the tremendous potential of ...

HOUSTON–Seafloor features and associated fauna present significant challenges to site selection for the wells, moorings, subsea equipment and flowlines associated with developing deepwater fields. At ...

At 40,000 feet thick in its deepest portion, the Anadarko Basin in western Oklahoma presents one of the premier shale targets in North America. Newfield Exploration Co. opened the STACK (Sooner Trend ...

The vast majority of the wells being drilled for both oil and gas production in unconventional plays are horizontal. At some point, most of these wells will require artificial lift to produce the ...