There was a time when to the untrained eye there was little above ground to indicate the stacked pay riches lying below the rusty dirt and pesky tumbleweeds of the Midland Basin. Now drilling rigs, christmas trees and pumpjacks dot the landscape. Although oil and gas activity is not new to the basin—with first oil produced not from the Santa Rita #1 well but from the T&P No. 1 well located in the Westbrook Field of Mitchell County in 1920—its pace has gone from gentle amble to full-on furious gallop thanks to ingenuity, persistence and technology.

Unconventional development activity was slow to start in the basin. However, in 2013 horizontal drilling in the basin took off and now, five years later, RS Energy Group sees signs that point to the basin’s transition from exploration to development mode.

“The shift by operators from aggressively completed test wells toward a more holistic approach that optimizes spacing patterns, reservoir drainage, surface facilities and total project value signals the Midland Basin’s transition to development mode,” the data intelligence and market analysis company stated in a recent market news release.

Contributing to the transition in the Midland Basin is Encana Corp. with its “cube” development approach. Rather than drill a few wells to hold acreage and then return to drill infi ll wells, the company uses large multiwell pads to simultaneously drill all primary zones in a drilling spacing unit. This approach maximizes effi ciency and utilization of equipment, crews and infrastructure above ground. The simultaneous use of multiple drilling rigs reduces cycle times and allows sharing of services, helping to keep drilling costs lower, according to the company.

Decoding the optimal well spacing for a shale play has long been like a “Goldilocks and The Three Bears” challenge. Determining where to place and how to space wells so that each is “not too far away, not too close, but just right” to its neighbor is key.

The addition of new wells to older wells creates a parent-child relationship with the child wells not being as productive as parent wells. Schlumberger shared at the 2018 SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technical Conference in January the results of a survey it conducted of 10 shale basins that examined the production performance of infill horizontal wells versus pre-existing wells. According to the paper (SPE189875-MS), the survey found there was a 50% chance that a child well will outperform a parent well. However, when production was normalized to include total proppant pumped and lateral length, Schlumberger found that larger volumes of proppant with longer laterals in the child well might be needed to achieve similar rates to the parent wells. Encana CEO Mike McAllister sees a clear benefi t to the company’s cube approach as all are parent wells. It “minimizes the risk of communication and enhances productivity by creating a more complex fracture network,” he said in the release.

The cube development and enhanced completion designs have delivered impressive results for the company’s wells in the Permian. The company announced in January that fourth-quarter 2017 production exceeded 80,000 boe/d, well ahead of the company’s target of 75,000 boe/d.