Ray N. Walker - Range Resources Corp.
Management
Yeah. Going back in time, we have, of course, been experimenting with going back on existing pads for years now. And, in fact, there's an example in the presentation that has got about over two years of production history on it. And it was a pad that we went on to a five well pad and put two additional wells on it. And we were wanting to answer three questions. One, how much money did we actually save? Number two, did the wells interfere with the existing wells that were already there? And then number three, since we were going onto a pad that was already two years old, with the better targeting and the better completion designs, in other words, two more years of learnings, would that really help the completion? And the answer was, as presented on that slide, we saved $850,000 per well, which is huge. The wells did not impact the existing target. And literally, the new wells were, literally, only targeted about 20 feet or 30 feet different from the original wells. So even in the same zone, which is only about 80 feet or 90 feet thick in that area, we were only about 20 feet apart in difference and we were 700 feet between wells and we did not impact the existing wells. So that was a huge learning for us and we've repeated that several times since. And then the third thing is the wells, after two years of production, were 53% better producers than the original wells. So you can start to imagine, if you just go through that hundreds of times, going forward in the future, you can start seeing what sort of capital efficiencies you could bake into that, and it's pretty impressive. So we've literally got a lot of that to do. I think a year or so ago, we were about 10% on existing pads. This year, I think we're probably less than that, hardly any on existing pads. Another important thing that's happened this year is we have all our HBP concerns are finished. So literally, we have no more acreage at risk and so we no longer have to worry about that aspect, which allows us to, going forward, really focus our capital in the very best returns. And that's what you're going to see us doing going forward. And I think you'll see those numbers gradually increase. I don't think it will ever be a 100% because, clearly, we've got some really good areas like in the eastern part of Washington County in our dry acreage, where even a grass roots, brand new, four well pad there has even got better economics than going back onto an existing wet or super-rich pad. So I think it allows us, real-time, to allocate capital to the very best projects in the Marcellus. And then now, of course, we've got another world-class asset, North Louisiana, that gives us another great option.