RE:RE:RMP Op Update - Successful Elmworth Well/Winter Plans"Read again from the last paragraph of the press release: "Future asset development of the Montney will be focused on extended reach horizontals with increased frac and proppant intensity."
Any vision on what that means for production future wells?"
It means more production and reserve recovery per acre of land quicker and cheaper with less infrastructure compared to the typical Montney wells with 1400 to 1600m laterals 100m/frac stage spacing and 100 tonne/stage proppant placement. A very recent example of longer Hz length with shorter stages and more proppant/stage is Paramount - they were successful last winter in significantly increasing production from Montney wells in lands within a couple of townships of RMP's.
That being said, bigger and more intense isn't always better - there are optimums that need to be determined for specific areas and careful attention is required to not get overly agressive to avoid throwing away money overdeveloping. One thing not wanted is signs of pressure interference between stages (meaning adjacent fracs competing to drain the same reserves) and another thing is inadvertently opening up communication to zones outside the zone targetted for stimulation where sour gas or mobile water could make production more difficult.
Given the large amount of recent Elmworth/Gold Creek/Karr offset activity, RMP's own experience & expertise, and constantly improving drilling and completion technologies I think there's an ample growing data set and toolbox of options to point things in the right direction. Certainly hitting a horizontal with 50m 60 tonne frac stages fits with what my experience tells me is a very workable completion design. But optimizing will take (using Advantage Oil & Gas as an example) at least a couple dozen wells, 3 years or so of production history and detailed geological/geophysical work to map out well placement and identify the sweet spot areas. So even though their work is off to a very good start there's a lot to do (which is great news!). Most importantly RMP's lands are appearing to be very economic with increasing oil & liquids production - that will attract competitor attention and tire kickers looking for a 300+ well development to fill their own growth needs....