Abstract

During 2013, the WolfBone Play in the Southern Delaware Basin has moved from exploration to development in multiple reservoirs. There are now over 500 Wolfcamp and Wolfcamp Trend Area wells including combined and isolated Bone Spring intervals in Reeves County, Texas. Most of these wells have been drilled in the last three years with no known geologic failures although not all wells are or will be economically successful.

Production rates in Reeves County have gone from under 100,000 BO to just under 1,000,000 BO per month in just the last two years. Contemporaneously, acquisition and divestiture activity has increased. This includes an increase in the number of transactions, in prices paid per net production volumes and in price paid per acre as geologic, engineering, and economic risks of the play are reduced and confidence of individual firms and the industry grows. Production rates in sequentially drilled and completed wells continue to increase at the same rates as it did during the earliest development of the play. All these trends indicate positive near and intermediate-term economic activity for the industry and communities.

This review focuses on four geo-technical and engineering changes developing over the last year and a half in the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring resource plays. These are: (1) the role and understanding of the Environments of Deposition (EOD), pressure seals and pressure within the reservoirs in the Wolfcamp Shale resource, (2) apparent regional structural overprint on the Environment of Deposition Model and relation to production, (3) inclusion of additional reservoir intervals, specifically the 2^nd Bone Spring, with the Wolfcamp Shale and 3^rd Bone Spring in vertical wells is leading