【 以下文字转载自 x3 俱乐部 】
发信人: Commissar (内务人民委员柯鈄同志), 信区: x3
标 题: 完了，气估计要去1块5了
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Sat Oct 24 22:57:21 2015, 美东)
成本大大降低，多低的价格都没事
Southwestern Energy wells see surge in gas production as costs fall
Posted on October 23, 2015 | By Collin Eaton
HOUSTON — Southwestern Energy Co. says it is figuring out ways to drill
better-performing wells on West Virginia and Pennsylvania land it bought
from larger operators last year, even as energy prices remain cheap.
Its newly drilled natural gas wells in the Marcellus Shale acreage are
outperforming the old wells it acquired from Chesapeake Energy and Statoil
late last year, by a big margin.
They’re pumping 60 percent more gas than expected and drilling and
completion costs have come down by 20 percent, in part because oil field
service companies have reduced equipment and service prices.
“It’s easy to see this asset has tremendous upside, even more than we
anticipated when making the deal last year,” Southwestern President and
Chief Operating Officer William Way said in a conference call with investors
on Friday.
Way said Southwestern is drilling its Marcellus wells in a smaller area
where it believes gas production could be most prolific, a tactic known as
high-grading.
It has also begun using tighter spacing between frac stages and has
increased the amount of sand it uses to as much as 3,000 pounds per foot in
its subterranean laterals. That’s brought costs down under $1,000 per
completed lateral foot, compared to $1,200 last year. Southwestern also cut
the time it takes to drill and complete a Marcellus well by two days.
Southwestern’s Marcellus acreage is one of the latest examples of the
efficiency gains U.S. oil companies are seeing. The efforts also illustrate
how much cheap natural gas and oil prices are draining away earnings despite
cost and productivity improvements.
Southwestern reported it lost $1.77 billion on a large asset impairment in
the third quarter, compared to its $211 million profit the same time last
year. Even with hedges locking in prices for its gas, it got an average $2.
21 per British thermal unit for its gas compared to $3.43 last year.
Southwestern is one of six large U.S. oil explorers that Barclays recently
flagged for more asset impairments in the third quarter. The group of six,
which also includes Chesapeake Energy, Apache Corp. and others, might have
to write down the value of their assets by a combined $20 billion because of
falling prices.
