Production and pride in the Piceance Basin

Future phases of the Piceance project will boost its production capacity, making the region one of the top producers of clean-burning natural gas in the United States.

A remote region of northwestern Colorado has become a showcase of ExxonMobil technologies driving down the cost of producing natural gas from complex reservoirs. And in the coming years, the Piceance Basin Unit will boost its production capacity, making this region one of the top producers of clean-burning natural gas in the United States.

ExxonMobil operations in the Piceance Basin are actively pushing forward, with as many as seven drilling rigs working full time, the completion of new gas and liquids gathering systems, treating facilities, a pipeline and an aggressive hiring program being conducted to support the growing activity. The longterm goal is to build one of North America’s significant new sources of domestic energy.

ExxonMobil’s leases in the Piceance (pronounced PEEawance) Basin hold an estimated 45 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, with current production of more than 100 million cubic feet a day.

“A project such as Piceance represents a long-term view of and commitment to energy development,” says Rich Kruger, ExxonMobil Production Company president. “The key to unlocking the potential of this large, technically challenging resource is increasing production and recovery rates from each well at lower cost. ExxonMobil scientists and engineers are working hard to improve the enabling technologies and processes to do just that.”

“The challenge of the Piceance Basin is that its natural gas is trapped within rock much tighter than concrete, and in hundreds of smaller reservoirs separated by thin layers of shale,” says Marky Dewhirst, ExxonMobil geoscientist. “So for a well to be productive, it must reach the gas in multiple zones, and to recover this ‘tight gas,’ ExxonMobil is applying its proprietary technology and best practices.”

This includes the company’s revolutionary Fast Drill Process, which has increased drilling rates worldwide by more than 50 percent, and multi-zone stimulation technology with just-in-time perforation (JITP) to access up to 50 gas-bearing zones in one well.

“These techniques were unheard of just a few years ago,” says Jim Branch, ExxonMobil’s Piceance project executive. “Each of our wells can recover gas from 20 acres, while others in the basin typically need one well for every 10 acres. The JITP process produces substantially more gas from the many zones it can tap from each well, so Piceance wells completed with our cutting-edge technology produce significantly more than conventionally fractured wells and at less cost.”

Small footprints
To save time and minimize the project environmental impact, nine to 10 wells are being drilled from each pad site. The derrick is on rails, so as soon as a well is complete, the rig can be moved over a few feet to begin the next one.

Far below the surface, the S-shaped wellbores fan out in all directions to reach their target zones. Drilling and completing batches of wells from one site not only saves time and money, but also increases project safety while cutting down on truck traffic to lessen impact on area roads. It further reduces the “project footprint” with fewer pad locations and associated field roads and pipeline right of ways.

Approximately 10 percent of ExxonMobil’s acreage is being developed under the first phase of the project, and hundreds of additional planned wells and several new pipelines are expected to bring this portion of the Piceance development to full capacity during the next few years. Future developments could increase natural gas production to a peak of 1 billion cubic feet a day, a nearly tenfold increase over current output.

Water conservation is a priority at the project. ExxonMobil developed a system that reuses the water recovered from production for other processes. This reduces fresh water use, a priority in this relatively dry region, by about 80 percent.

In addition, ExxonMobil conducts extensive plant, wildlife and archaeological surveys to help manage the environmental performance of the Piceance Basin operations. The company also participates in studies with local educational institutions and government agencies to maximize protection of native wildlife habitats and plant species in the project development area.

“With natural gas expected to be the fastest-growing major fuel source, driven largely by its increased use to generate electricity,” says Kruger, “ExxonMobil is committed to developing this resource efficiently and with environmental care and sensitivity.”