(Oil Price) – Chevron will boost the so-called triple fracs — fracturing three wells with one frac spread at one time — to more than half of its wells in the Permian basin, a Chevron executive told Reuters, amid efforts to reduce the costs and times of fracking at the world’s top shale basin.
Chevron plans to use triple-frac on between 50% and 60% of its wells in the Permian, up from 20% of wells “triple-fracked” last year, Jeff Newhook, a completions operations manager at the U.S. supermajor, told Reuters in an interview.
The triple-frac reduces by 25% the time to bring wells to production. This leads to a 12% drop in Chevron’s cost per fracked well in the Permian, Newhook said.
Chevron started using the triple-frac in the Permian Basin for the first time a year ago. The U.S. supermajor continues to boost its oil and gas production from the basin, but it has cut capital expenditures.
At the end of 2024, Chevron said it planned to spend between $4.5 billion and $5 billion on production in the Permian in 2025, lower than in 2024, “as production growth is reduced in favor of free cash flow.”
While the Permian spending is lower, Chevron now looks to drill more wells at one go.
According to the top U.S. fracking services provider, Halliburton, simultaneous fracking, or simul-frac operations, boost efficiencies as the number of days on location are significantly reduced.
Chevron and the other U.S. oil producers need a new efficiency boost, a major one at that, if they don’t want to begin slowing activity and production levels amid WTI Crude price crashing down to $55 per barrel as of Wednesday morning. That level is already about $10 a barrel below the average $65 per barrel price U.S. producers need to profitably drill a new well, as they indicated in the Dallas Fed Energy Survey for the first quarter.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
