FORT WORTH, Texas -- Rosetta Resources Inc. (NASDAQ: ROSE), which entered the Permian Basin last year, is working hard to establish itself in the unfamiliar territory.

While Rosetta is an experienced shale player, it had no presence is the historical Permian until 2013. Since that time, the company has delivered 7,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d).

Rosetta’s experience is the principle reason for its success in the Permian’s Delaware Basin, said Dan Calnan, the company's vice president of operations, during Hart Energy’s DUG Permian conference on May 22.

"The growth of our core area in the Delaware Basin requires a unique technical analysis and application of experience, which we’ve learned in other basins," Calnan said.

Last year, Houston-based Rosetta acquired 40,200 net acres of Reeves County assets and quickly started deploying knowledge gained from its operations in the Eagle Ford Shale to maximize efficiency and cost.

“Right now I think we’ve come to a good point of efficiency and our Eagle Ford operations are still focused on improvement,” he said. “As we deploy those into the Permian, I think we’re off to a pretty fast start.”

Rosetta completed two upper-Wolfcamp horizontal wells in the first-quarter of 2014, and plans to continue to test the horizontal potential for various benches in the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring formations during the remainder of the year.

“Our total horizontal well cost in cycle time has improved dramatically since taking over operations a little less than a year ago," he said. "It continues in the right direction.”

The company added another 5,000 net acres from a bolt-on acquisition in Reeves County earlier this year, bringing its total holdings in the Delaware Basin to 47,000 net acres. It doubled its inventory of horizontal projects to 1,200 gross Wolfbone locations with 288 MMboe of total resource potential, 82% of which is liquids.

The company is currently running four rigs, and aims to drill about 24 horizontal wells across the acreage in 2014.

Calnan, who has 24 years of upstream experience, pointed out that unconventional drilling considerably sped up operations. This change in velocity increases creates an ongoing challenge for the team to continually apply its cross-basin and industry knowledge to improve operations, he said.

“From a technical standpoint, it makes it that much more critical for being able to gather and analyze it and deploy the things that you learn,” he said.

Additionally, Rosetta is gaining information from those nonoperated wells it holds interest in, he said. The company’s partners include operators such as Concho Resources Inc. (NYSE: CXO), Occidental Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: OXY) and Atlantic Operating LLC.

“The challenge is to integrate that data and use it—not just moving on to the next thing you have to do, but really taking a look at what you’ve learned and how you’re going to employ it going forward,” he said.

Looking ahead in 2015, the company will continue to refine its operations to grow its production volumes and also pursue new growth through additional bolt-on acquisitions, he said.

The company has an additional 13,000 net acres of Permian acreage, within the Midland Basin, in Gaines County, but it is currently in an exploration phase.

Rosetta's first acquisition as an unconventional player was a major leasehold position in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas in 2009. Since beginning operations in the play, it has completed 244 gross horizontal wells as of March 31.

The company formed in 2005 when it was spun out from Calpine Corp., a major power producer now based in Houston. It originally had legacy assets located throughout the U.S. and decided to break free of those assets after choosing to pursue the unconventional resources path in 2007.