Cabot nails vertical Marcellus-Purcell interval
By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, July 24 – Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., Houston, is producing 39 MMcfd of Marcellus shale gas from seven horizontal and 20 vertical wells in northeastern Pennsylvania, where it notched a critical success with one of its latest vertical completions.
Cumulative recovery is 5.8 bcf since the company’s first Marcellus well came on line a year ago in Susquehanna County.
A ninth rig is preparing to spud, and 18 more horizontal wells are to be drilled this year. Three other wells are completing, and 12 are waiting on completion or pipeline hookup.
The most recent horizontal completion, Teel-8H, flowed at an initial 10.3 MMcfd with a maximum spot rate of 12 MMcfd, and its 30-day average is 9.8 MMcfd.
The vertical Teel-6 had initial flow of 4.2 MMcfd from 370 ft of lower and upper Marcellus, and Cabot believes the stimulation contacted most of that interval including the gassy Purcell limestone that separates them.
Cabot called Teel-6 “a critical event in the development of our Marcellus acreage" because the size and shape of its individual leases on its large acreage block limit much of the drilling to vertical wells.
The $1.4 million well is also the first at which the company stimulated the entire column, whereas it has fract its horizontal wells entirely in the lower Marcellus and only slightly in the curved section has it treated the upper Marcellus.
Cabot is hiking takeaway capacity at its Teel compression station to 70 MMcfd on Aug. 1 and 100 MMcfd a year later.