Oil drilling activity remains fairly steady in county
News - Published on: January 01, 2014
After hitting a peak in 2011, the pace of oil drilling activity in Dawson County has remained fairly steady the past two years, according to records from the Texas Railroad Commission.
Through Monday, the commission had issued 78 permits for new oil drilling ventures in Dawson County.
While the great majority of those permit were for standard vertical drilling operations, three were for horizontal wells and two for directional ventures.
That total is just off the mark of 80 new drilling permits issued for Dawson County during the 2012 calendar year.
A total of 113 permits for new oil drilling operations in Dawson County were issued by the Railroad Commission in 2011 as the most recent oil boom across the Permian Basin region of West Texas started hitting full swing.
By comparison, only 31 new drilling permits were issued for Dawson County in 2009 and 64 in 2010, according to the Railroad Commission website.
Thank you for posting this information, Earnest. I found it rather interesting. I read where there were three permits for standard horizontal drilling operations. Can you, please, explain the difference between horizontal wells and directional ventures?
When I looked up my lease through the RRC, I was able to pull up the permits for both vertical and horizontal. Currently, I know they are moving into preparing the well for horizontal production; however, until they sell product(s) produced, I will not have an indication as to what may be projected to be there. My family and I are learning about this industry as we move alone through each stage.
From my understanding, a directional drill is a dril that can drill down to an angle. Those are useful for explorers that are trying to avoid certain areas in the sediment or to drill to an otherwise unattainable location (e.g. underneath a pond). Basically a directional is for all intents and purposes the same as a vertical for productive possibilities.
Horizontals are great because it allows producers to run to the formation depth they want (ie spraberry, cline, wolcamp) and then run several thousand feet of borehole through that productive (hopefully) formation.
I would hazard a guess that your company could very likely be going for the spraberry + wolfcamp formation. That seems to be what most are going for in our area. Could be Cline as well but it is just a guess either way.
From what I read in the permit...it stated spraberry; however, there was some conversation about the wolfcamp formation and cline. I was told that the geographical studies are closed, so I was not allowed to view those. They drilled 11, 500 feet when they drilled the vertical during Dec. 2012. This past Dec (2013), they actually used systemic equipment for recording something on the property for two days, but when I asked about it, I was told they could not release information on the findings because it was confidential.
Seeing as we are in the Midland Basin, that would put the range for the Wolfcamp formations from 7000' to 8500' and the Cline formation from 9000' plus. Now I have seen different numbers just depending on the company and from what I understand those depths for the formations aren't uniform across a given area. In other words, what Laredo might consider the Cline formation would vary in depth depending on topography.
As far as them doing seismic research on your land recently, I believe that could only be a good thing. Having already drilled they must be trying to figure out the line they want to drill across. Trying to find the best potential path to hit the sweet spots.
That is what we are hoping for. I'll provide an update at the end of this month or beginning of the next when I hear something further from them. Thank you again for the information/chart.
