MIDLAND, Texas — More sand and more stages are paying off with more production in Cimarex Energy Co.’s (NYSE: XEC) Delaware Basin Lower Wolfcamp area. The operator’s Flying Ebony well had a 30-day peak IP that averaged 3,127 barrels of oil per day (boe/d), 23% oil, with 2,400 pounds (lb) of proppant per lateral foot (ft) in a total of 48 frack stages.

In contrast, 15 other 10,000-ft laterals in the area averaged 2,361 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d), said Roger Alexander, Cimarex’s vice president and regional exploration manager for the Permian, at Hart Energy’s recent Executive Oil Conference.

Cumulative production per well after a year online has been nearly 600 Mboe. After about four months online, Flying Ebony had already made nearly 250 Mboe.

The 15 pre-Flying Ebony wells alone were 70% improved from the company’s 5,000-ft beta Tim Tam well, which produced about 350 Mboe after a year online.

“My reservoir engineers are constantly changing their frack designs,” Alexander said. “You get bigger, more clusters, more stages. They’re trying to figure out how to reduce that white space in the frack.”

In the Second Bone Spring area in Cimarex’s leasehold, more sand is also making a clear difference, he said. Wells that were fracture-stimulated with up to 500 lb of proppant per lateral foot made about 50 Mbbl of liquids in their first six months online. Those treated with more than 1,500 lb/ft have made about 250 Mbbl in that time.

“You can see that, from where we started, that’s almost a five-time increase in production. So [completing] with more stages, more clusters, more sand has had a huge impact on production.”

Cimarex’s third-quarter 2016 Permian oil production was 35,930 bbl/d; companywide, it was 44,532 bbl/d including production from its Midcontinent operations. Overall, Cimarex will have completed 62 net wells this year.

Drill days are down significantly, meanwhile, Alexander said. “When we first started drilling [these] in 2011 … to drill a Bone Spring well in the White City/Culberson area had taken almost 36 days [normalized to a one-mile lateral for 12,000 ft of measured depth].”

The company reduced that to about 14 days in 2013 and 2014. This year, net wells are being drilled in 10 days.

In its Wolfcamp area, spud-to-release time was about 70 days in 2010 for the equivalent of a two-mile lateral for nearly 20,000 ft of measured depth. The time has now improved to about 30 days.

Cimarex leased about 230,000 net acres in the Delaware Basin between 2010 and 2014 for an average of about $1,640 an acre.

Alexander said the company’s Oklahoma and Permian divisions share knowledge. In one example, the Oklahoma group’s best practices in the Cana-Woodford play were deployed in the Permian “and we started our Wolfcamp play.”

In another, Permian best practices in full-section development were taken to Oklahoma “and it really took off. There is mixed emotion, though. We were getting all the money at that point—about 75% of drilling capital. Now it’s about 60:40,” he said.

The company’s 2017 drilling and completion spending is expected to be $600 million—about the same as 2016. Companywide, Cimarex currently has eight rigs working and plans to exit 2016 with nine.

Nissa Darbonne can be reached at ndarbonne@hartenergy.com.

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