Question for NMoilboy or anyone else that might have experience with Lea.
Why would an operator like Marathon wait to turn on DUCs? Would you know anything behind the story of these two that still haven’t been completed on Sec 19-24s-25e in Lea County NM?
The API’s for the wells in question are: 30-025-44664 and 30-025-44663
There are 3 wells around them that are producing and seem to have been drilled simultaneously. I’m just wondering why the delay on the remaining two.
Thank you!
Hello,
Had the same problem with Marathon in Section 34 T21S, R33E Lea County, NM. Three Battle wells were drilled during the height of Covid and never completed. Since then, a release of lease document was filed and received. Apparently, Marathon has no intention of completing or plugging these wells.
We don’t get to see full reports so this is based off what appears in NMOCD wellfiles.
44664: They set intermediate casing (i.e. the vertical part of well), started drilling out but ended up setting a cement plug very early in the horizontal. Never drilled it out to TD, still had 8000’ of horizontal drilling to go. So they probably lost a big fish down the hole and decided its junked.
44663: More cryptic. They drilled it to TD (total depth). Which was about 20,000 ft (10,000 down, 10,000 hz). They ran production csg. Doesn’t look like they got it to TD and implies they never cemented it in. Only got csg to 15997’. So that well is also basically junked. I don’t know that makes sense at all, but reading tea leaves on 3 sentences and a small table.
Feel free to read everything I typed here as “those wells will never produce, MRO screwed them up” as my best guess. The wells they did complete are great, so you got that going for you.
What is the point of getting a lease, getting a permit, and drilling a well, but not completing it? Seems like a lot of investment to no end. Why do that?
I agree. What a waste of resources. I would expect a company like MRO to be better stewards. Seeing they have trashed other newly drilled wells just compounds the frustration.
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