Courtesy of wsj.com

Experimental wells in Louisiana by explorers including Comstock Resources Inc. and Chesapeake Energy Inc. are proving highly lucrative thanks to modern drilling techniques and the sheer volume of fossil fuels that can be coaxed out of the ground.

The trick is applying supersize versions of the horizontal-drilling and fracking techniques that worked successfully elsewhere to an area that hasn’t seen this approach yet. The gains come from extending the lateral portions of wells by thousands of feet and pumping them full of enormous volumes of sand, chemicals and water to flush out more hydrocarbons.

“Applying this technique has really doubled the area that we can drill in the Haynesville, Jason Pigott, a Chesapeake executive vice president, told investors.

“This is a brilliant example of how the cost of supply continues to come down,” says Robert Clarke, a research director at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultant. Newer Haynesville wells are producing more gas, are larger and are being drilled more quickly, he said. Mr. Clarke cautioned that these experimental lower-cost wells have been drilled in a relatively small area of the Haynesville and by a small number of companies.

The Haynesville field produces 8% of the nation’s natural gas, making it the second largest after the giant Marcellus Shale in the Northeast.

Source: wsj.com