On Monday, Saskatchewan announced a new comprehensive program to attract investment to the province. One of the items is a new program to incentive multi-lateral wells. That’s a well that looks like a herringbone or spiderweb, with lots of legs and increased production.
The question I will be asking soon is if companies are already doing this, why do we need an incentive? Are we leaving money on the table, or is there an expectation of a lot more returns?
Well come to Saskatchewan.
Life Follows Art dept.
I Dig RocknRoll Music – Peter, Paul & Mary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMj2WqwehU4
We have incentives because politicians need to be able to take credit for doing nothing. It is the “Me, too” participation letter for government and it costs everybody a whole lot that doesn’t need to be spent. A good idea that makes money will always be able to find funding unless there is a competitor that campaigns against it – a different problem that doesn’t require government intervention either.
If a profit can be made without government do it, because government will waste every damn dollar earned. Incentives are not needed in an economically free country. I am so tired of the people in this country. Dumb A S S E S thinking they know more than business people and maybe just plain intelligent people.
Brian multi leg wells were being drilled in SE Sask in the early 1990’s … I think my first were around 1991 in Ingoldsby. Often we did multi legs just to get the minimum length required to get the royalty holiday … the well had to be over 300 metres long and if all you had was an LSD then multi legs were the only way to get 300 metres.
Doing a lot of legs isn’t always a good thing … I was convinced that after 3 legs you were doing so much damage to the formation while drilling any additional legs that there was no gain and perhaps even a loss. All the drilling muds break down with time and especially the enzyme polymer muds would start to unzip after so many hours at the formation temperature. So you wanted to be done drilling and cleaning out the well as the mud starts to break free of the well bore.
Also depending on permeability the additional legs would start to interfere with each other pretty early in their production life.
Oh, I know they’ve been around a long time. But now 8 legs is becoming commonplace. In Alberta, I’ve heard up to 20, and long ones, too. And a geologist told me they were doing all that with one PDC bit! Can you imagine?
As for formation damage, and I’m no expert on this, there is the option of underbalance drilling, I guess.
The Bakken where this is taking hold doesn’t have much permeability in the first place, but apparently by doing 8 legs, they don’t need to frac, which is a huge savings.
I thought “Multi-Leg Wells” was a legendary Saskatchewan choreographer?
Surge Energy’s 2023 year end presentation shows a vertically stacked hz Frobisher oil well in SE Sask. It has 3 open hole hz laterals, each targeting a layer of pay within the formation. Interestingly the lower layers of the Frobisher were thought to be wet (100% H2O) but wells like this one show there’s good oil to get and should encourage more development capital for developing more reservoirs. Good on the SK Gov’t to recognize that supporting Operators to use innovative drilling designs helps maximize hydrocarbon reserve recovery.