Expand Energy is keeping an eye on the far western wildcats its fellow Haynesville producers Comstock Resources and Aethon Energy have been making north of Houston.

The new play’s oldest well has made 2.2 Bcf per 1,000 lateral ft in its first 29 months, according to Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) files.

“I would say all of us probably are [watching],” Tim Beard, Expand vice president of drilling, said at Hart Energy’s 16th annual DUG Appalachia Conference & Expo this month in Pittsburgh.

“I think all good companies are looking over the fence at what their neighbors are doing. I think you're remiss if you're not.”

Is Expand interested in joining the play expansion? “In this [gas] price environment, it would be difficult for us to dive in. But we are absolutely paying attention to what they're doing,” Beard said.

Comstock and Aethon’s wells in Robertson and Leon counties, Texas, “have been fantastic” producers.

But they’re costly too, he noted. Comstock confirmed in an investor call in October that its most recent well's D&C cost was $2,814 per lateral ft.

“So [for] 10,000-foot laterals, we can all do that math,” Beard said. “It gets really, really expensive really quickly.”

The figure is Comstock’s lowest per lateral foot to date, the operator reported in its investor call. It hasn’t revealed costs yet for its earliest wells, although industry rumors have been that they were between $30 million and as much as $40 million for 10,000 lateral ft.

Among Comstock’s 12 wells and Aethon’s five wells in the new play, production totaled 143 Bcf through August, the latest month for which the RRC has published production data.

The wells’ laterals average 8,895 ft to date. The average production on a per-1,000-lateral-ft basis is 946 MMcf through August from wells ranging from five months to 29 months.

D&C intel

Expand, which was formed in October from the merger of Chesapeake Energy and Southwestern Energy, discovered the original Haynesville play in late 2007 in northwestern Louisiana while it was Chesapeake.

Comstock’s far western stepout is landing wells in both Bossier sand and the underlying Haynesville shale beginning in the spring of 2022. Aethon joined it in the fall of 2022.

“We've paid attention to what they're doing,” Beard said. “They're making some fantastic wells, right? Very, very over pressured. Very hot.”

The temperature can reach 425 F, according to vertical Bossier explorers’ logs in the early 2000s. Initial pressures have measured as much as 17,000 psi.

Beard said Expand’s Haynesville play in northwestern Louisiana “is also very hot. We get into the 390s [F], which is difficult to drill in, needless to say.”

Moving west, “they're even hotter than that as you work your way into East Texas and go deeper into higher pressures.”

Operators are paying attention for D&C intel. “Their conditions are even more harsh than the conditions we're dealing with on the Louisiana side.

“So any lessons they learn—any lessons that your motor companies, your service companies are learning—over there, we can take those to a less harsh environment on the Louisiana side of the Haynesville and get better,” Beard said.

“And we're seeing that [happening].”

U-turn laterals

While it was Chesapeake, Expand was early to test U-turn laterals converting two one-mile laterals into one two-mile lateral and is particularly used in leasehold where operators don’t hold adjacent square-mile sections.

It made eight of these to date, all in the Eagle Ford—six full U-turn holes, a W-turn and a J-turn—before exiting South Texas in 2023.

“We’ve done it successfully,” Beard said. “And you do that because of offsetting wells, lease requirements” and other reasons.

There is potential for U-turns in Expand’s Haynesville as well, Beard said. There, GeoSouthern Energy’s GEP Haynesville spud one in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, earlier this year.

The results prompted Comstock to put one nearby this summer. It plans two U-turns in a one-section lease.

Beard said, “Now, you have to worry about the stresses downhole to make sure that these wellbores aren't going to fall apart.”

But they’re doable.

Four one-mile Louisiana Haynesville sticks would have involved two pads and cost $40 million, Dan Harrison, Comstock COO, told investors in an August call.

Making two U-turn wells instead will result in a single pad at a cost of $32 million.

If successful, “the majority of all the short wells in our inventory will convert to long laterals,” Harrison said.

Is Expand interested in making U-laterals in the Marcellus? “Absolutely,” Beard said.

Where there is stranded acreage, “it’s going to enhance your economics. We're not doing it for any reason other than that.”

Coterra Energy spud one in the Marcellus in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, in September 2023, according to Udriller.com, which tracks the wells.

Only one other U-turn lateral—Ascent Energy’s Echo ATH HR #3H in the Utica in Belmont County, Ohio, in 2022—has been drilled in Appalachia to date, according to Udriller.com.

“I think the Ohio and West Virginia area—being more benign from a subsurface-feature perspective—is probably where they make the most sense in [Appalachia],” Beard said.

“But that doesn't mean we won't do those in Northeast Pennsylvania as well.”

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