PITTSBURGH—Often, the tougher road is the most rewarding. That’s something the engineers and geologists who founded Inflection Energy LLC have long understood, and their willingness to take on a challenge has paid off.
Rodney Gray, CEO of the Denver-based private operator, gave the audience at Hart Energy’s recent DUG East Conference & Exhibition a taste of what can be accomplished in a challenging setting—with a little ingenuity and a lot of experience. He pointed out that his company set out to find structurally complicated areas to drill, the kind of places from which many E&Ps shy away.
Inflection Energy’s engineers and geologists found their payoff two time zones east of their company’s headquarters, but in area that looked awfully familiar to the wells they’d found success in while drilling closer to home in the Rocky Mountains.
“In looking for a new play, [we] came upon an area in the Appalachian structural front in Lycoming County [Pennsylvania] that looked a lot like the overthrust area in the Rockies [our engineers and geologists] were used to working in,” he said.
Backed by what Gray calls “a strong group of funds,” led by Houston-based Chambers Group, Inflection Energy headed east and set up shop near the Transco-Leidy line, in the dry gas area north of the Allegheny structural front near the Marcellus outcrop.
“We’re separated from the outcrop by a major thrust fault that has provided a seal, preventing reservoir pressure leak-off,” he said. “Our depths are between 6,000 and 10,000 feet where we find the high-pressure zones. We have some of the deepest wells and highest reservoir pressures in the Marcellus.”
The company has put together 38,000 contiguous acres and has more than 400 drilling locations in the area. It has drilled and completed 28 wells and captured more than 2 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of IP natural gas reserves. Gray said the area has the potential to deliver up to 7 Tcf results.
A lot of that work is happening in the transition zone between a valley and ridge area to Inflection’s south and the Appalachian Plateau to its north. “Many of the operators in northeast Pennsylvania are focused on the Plateau.” Gray said. “We have found that the complexity of the transition zone is remarkable, manageable and rewarding.”
RELATED VIDEO: See Rodney Gray’s DUG East presentation to find out more on Inflection Energy’s technological and leasehold position strategies in the area.
Gray said that the company has a field average of greater than 3 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per thousand. One well, Stunner Smith, has production results that “supports a 6.4 Bcf per thousand reserve assignment,” he continued.
“It’s drilled into a compartment that has very high-pressure gradient and has continued to push us as to what we think it can produce,” Gray said during a question-and-answer session following his presentation. “Everybody said a well like this will begin to taper off, but it’s just continued to perform.”
In the same side session, Phillip Lord, Infection Energy’s executive vice president, added that the success of the well can be attributed to “a combination of lateral placement and executing the frack, but it’s probably more to do with the depth of the rock and the reservoir pressure more than anything else.”
Lord said that they’ve also seen promising results from one of the wells on the last three-well pad they drilled in the area in late-2016. “It’s really early times. I wouldn’t say it’s a Stunner Smith, but it looks really, really good,” he said. “The other two look very good as well. They could be three of our best five wells.”
That’s a lot of success and promise for an area that saw little activity in the past. “When we first looked at this area, there was one well, drilled by Rice Energy Inc., and it had a 0.6 psi per foot pressure gradient,” Gray said. “We are less than 1 mile from the outcrop, but separated by the thrust fault. We have experience with faults. Faults can be either seals or leaks. Ours are seals.”
It’s a somewhat rare occurrence, Gray said, adding that there aren’t many wells actually aided by faults. He knows working in that type of environment isn’t for everyone, but his company is willing to take on the challenge. And the effort has yielded big results.
“It’s structurally complex, but it works for us because we know how to do it,” he said.
Len Vermillion can be reached at lvermillion@hartenergy.com or @LenVermillion.
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