FORT WORTH, Texas—With commodity prices rebounding but still in recovery mode, production down and demand edging up, how can North American operators make unconventional resources economic in a medium oil-price environment?

It comes down to technology, which drives operational efficiencies that lead to capital efficiencies, according to Ian Bryant, president of Packers Plus Energy Services Inc. For shale players, better reservoir connections are crucial to unlocking economic barrels.

Speaking to a crowd gathered for Hart Energy’s DUG Permian Basin conference, Bryant—holder of 20 patents and a leader of the company that invented the ball-drop sliding sleeve—shared some of what he called low-cost operational efficiencies that could build on technology gains that have already helped the U.S. displace OPEC as the supplier of the marginal barrel.

These included using a combination of acoustic and high sample-density pressure measurements during ball-drop operations, instead of relying on information from a data van to indicate whether the ball left the surface.

The example is one way in which he believes technology can help set North American operators apart from competition elsewhere, including Saudi Arabia where lower permeability makes it easier and cheaper to get oil from conventional fields—whether it’s a vertical well at the Ghawar Field or a horizontal well at the Shaybah Field.

The dependence on fractures to free up hydrocarbons from shale plays in North America, such as the Wolfcamp where permeability ranges from 10 nD to 3,000 nD compared to Ghawar’s 15 mD to 30 mD, has presented challenges. If running in plugs, over displacement is a possibility and operators risk not having proppant close to the reservoir, losing connections to fractures, Bryant said.

Getting higher fracture density while containing costs is another obstacle. Operators have moved away from single point entry techniques to multiple entry points per stage, relying on a limited entry technique to distribute the fracture evenly between multiple entry points, he said.

“Despite those challenges those connected fractures have yielded an awful lot of oil over the past four or five years,” Bryant said.

Technology can lead to efficiency gains, he said.

Connecting to the reservoir through a reinforced port that won’t erode during the fracturing operation, instead of relying on perforation clusters to connect to the reservoir, was one of the examples he used. “We would drop a ball and open up one of those ports, use the same ball to open a second nozzle and a third time, then we can frack through the well as if it was a series of perforation clusters. But we haven’t used perforation guns; we’ve used cement for isolation,” he explained.

Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, pad drilling, optimized laterals and well spacing among other technological advances and improved techniques have already helped North America successfully exploit its unconventional resources, which contributed to the oil price collapse. That, in turn, forced the industry to get even better at its job—seeking out ways to become more efficient, lower costs and avoid inefficiencies that were once “forgivable sins” in times of $100-plus oil.

Times have changed. Bryant pointed out that North America has laid down more than 80% of its rigs, Saudi Arabia has decided to sell part of Saudi Aramco and OPEC member countries that need at least $60 oil to fund budgets are struggling.

“Light tight oil has the opportunity to fill the gap between what OPEC can supply to the market and what demand requires,” Byrant said, noting the environment will be more competitive and probably more volatile. “We have to work harder to get unconventional completion techniques to be efficient so we can attract capital needed develop reservoirs.

“To gain this efficiency we’re going to need to deploy new technology,” he added. “It’s not the strongest that’s going to survive. It’s the people that can adapt to the new environment the quickest.”

Velda Addison can be reached at vaddison@hartenergy.com.