Word to the Wise: Southwest Peace River area drilling overview
November 1, 2022
Each week, XI Technologies scans its unique combination of enhanced industry data to provide trends and insights that have value for professionals doing business in the WCSB. If you’d like to receive our Word to the Wise in your inbox, subscribe here.
Last week, XI Technologies published an area overview of the Southwest Peace River area, looking at the production, liabilities, and emissions in the area. This week, we’ll look at drilling activity in the area. This follows similar overviews we published for the Montney, Pembina, Blueberry River, and Provost areas.
Drilling in the area is dominated by Montney-targeted wells, which make up over 75% of the wells drilled in the region. Though Montney is the most prominent of the Triassic formations of focus, other members include Charlie Lake, followed by Doig, Dunvegan, and Doe Creek.
Note: for the purposes of this article, we define the Southwest Peace River area with the boundaries pictured below. This may differ from other internal company definitions. “Year” refers to Final Drill Date.
Most active operators
All the major players have held a consistent dominance in the area for the past five years, most notably, Ovintiv Canada ULC, Tourmaline Oil Corp, and ARC Resources Ltd. Birchcliff Energy Ltd and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd join them with a significant presence.
Looking further back in the history of this play, we see much of the same, but with a few other noteworthy findings.
2017-2018 were peak years in the area, after two previous slow drilling years. 2020 was a down year as it was everywhere, but 2021 signaled a bounce-back that we can expect to continue in 2022.
Trends in wells drilled and well depths over time
Let’s look deeper at information that tells us more about the drills themselves. 2021 marked not only an increase in wells drilled, it also marked a year of the most metres drilled since the peak in 2017.
Average well depth has increased every year, with the highest number of wells being in the 3866-4629 depth range.
To learn more about how XI’s OffsetAnalyst software can help you improve drilling research and performance, contact XI Technologies.