ABSTRACT: Experience with 200 Horizontal Wells

LINDAHL, GEORGE III, T. R. SVOR, B. E. KLEINSORGE, and G. D. DRAKE, JR., Union Pacific Resources Company, Fort Worth, TX

Union Pacific Resources is the world leader in numbers of horizontal wells drilled and now producing. In the vertically fractured Cretaceous Chalks of south Texas, over 200 horizontal wells have been completed successfully. Horizontal technology has allowed the economic redevelopment and extension of old noncommercial fields.

Factors contributing to Union Pacific Resources Company's success include: (1) integrated geological, geophysical, and engineering approaches to high grading land acquisition and to selection of target zones for drilling and completion; (2) extensive formation evaluation, including open-hole logging of one-third of our horizontal wells (correlations between number and quality of fractures and well productivity and reserves have been developed); and (3) innovative, high-rate, high-volume stimulation of horizontal wells, which has added significant incremental reserves at extremely low cost.

Union Pacific Resources Company's experience with its first 200 horizontal wells is summarized, and several field examples showing the economic importance of an integrated approach to horizontal drilling projects are presented.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91012©1992 AAPG Annual Meeting, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, June 22-25, 1992 (2009)