The Broncos may have lost the Super Bowl, but two things remain constant in the Rockies’ 2014 playbook: slickwater fracs and sliding sleeves.

Those two downhole stalwarts illustrate that the Rockies still present tight sands opportunities for hydrocarbons. Much of that opportunity involves going back into older fields and prospecting for different layers, or turning well bores horizontal to capture bypassed hydrocarbons.

Hart Energy surveyed oil services contractors on the drilling and well completion side, along with a handful of oil and gas operators at work in the Rockies outside the Bakken shale. The surveys found the oil services sector guardedly optimistic on 2014 regional activity with the exception of the dry gas plays in western Colorado and southwest Wyoming.

Contractors identified several regional trends including moving from vertical to horizontal wells in the liquids-rich Dakota Formation in the Greater Green River Basin. Regionally, the move to horizontal drilling suggests operators are still in delineation mode in new plays, though early optimization efforts are unfolding in select markets as operators experiment with downhole practices. Coil tubing is appearing more frequently during completion activities as the region transitions from vertical to horizontal wells.

Operators made significant progress on the evolution to pad drilling in 2013. Pad drilling now accounts for up to 90% of horizontal wells in a few specific plays and is spreading rapidly elsewhere in the region with contractors anticipating a 15% increase in the number of horizontal wells drilled on pads in 2014. The average number of wells per pad remains fewer than three, however, slightly more than in the Permian, but below the averages in the Eagle Ford, Bakken, and Marcellus shales.

Proppant volumes are lower here than in other plays, partly because completion practices feature fewer frac stages than other basins. Proppant rates range from 600,000 to 800,000 pounds of sand on a 10-stage vertical well to more than 1 million pounds on a representative 18-stage horizontal lateral with coarse sand the predominant proppant. Zipper fracs are the main completion method on pad wells.

While stage clustering is beginning to dominate mature regions elsewhere, operators in the Rockies are still spacing stages at even intervals. The region has yet to see the widespread implementation of longer laterals that is characteristic of the Bakken. While contractors anticipate demand will grow for higher spec rigs on the basis of longer laterals, particularly in 2015, most customers are still comfortable with 750-1,000 horsepower rigs for drilling laterals . Higher spec rigs will likely be newbuild units when they arrive, since it is unlikely the Rockies drilling market outside the Bakken shale will draw higher spec units currently active in North Dakota.

Drillers tell Hart that more contracts are available from customers, but feature shorter terms. One- and two-year contracts have given way to six-month contracts, though operators in the Rockies signal they will be looking for rigs in June when the newer, shorter-term contracts roll over.

Contact the author, Richard Mason, at rmason@hartenergy.com

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