Published: March 1, 2023 |

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About 20 years ago, the shale revolution was launched in the Fort Worth Basin where the Barnett Shale has yielded one of the nation’s largest onshore natural gas fields.

As that revolution headed west toward the Permian Basin, producers tried to crack the Barnett code but couldn’t quite fit the pieces together. But they managed to take the technological advancements in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing that opened the Barnett, applied them to the Spraberry and Wolfcamp formations — as well as the Bone Spring — and as a result the Permian is now producing a record 5.5 million barrels a day.

But as the prime rock in those venerable formations begins to play out, operators are looking for the next target, and beginning to revisit the Barnett.

“You’ll see some exciting things in the next couple of years. You’ll see different plays — the Barnett Woodford has been tested already and Pioneer has several thousand locations there,” Scott Sheffield, chief executive officer at Pioneer Natural Resources, said at the recent Goldman Sachs Global Energy and Clean Technology Conference. 

Rich Dealy, Pioneer’s president and chief operating officer, told the Reporter-Telegram the company is drilling four Barnett wells this year and will gauge their productivity.

It all depends on the economics. By the end of 2023, we will have a better understanding of what the productivity is and how the Barnett can compete with our Spraberry and Wolfcamp wells,” Dealy said.

A believer in the Permian portion of the Barnett is Midland’s Elevation Resources, which drilled a horizontal Barnett wildcat oil discovery in Andrews County in 2016.

“Other operators had previously drilled Barnett gas wells out west in Culberson County with limited success. We were drilling deeper Devonian horizontal wells and had strong shows in the Barnett, which is above the Devonian carbonate at 10,500 feet,” Steve Pruett, Elevation’s president and chief executive officer, told the Reporter-Telegram by email.

Pruett noted that the economics of the over-pressured Barnett were stronger than the company’s drilling locations in the Delaware and Southern Midland Basin, so the Delaware and southern Midland Basin locations were sold so the company could focus on the development of the Barnett on the Central Basin Platform.

“We are now drilling our 47th well in the play, and we have over 70 locations remaining to drill. The Barnett is gassier than the Wolfcamp, but it produces less water, thus the wells are cheaper to operate than the Wolfcamp or Spraberry wells. I am proud of Elevation’s employees who perfected the drilling and completion designs to make this technically challenging play economic,” Pruett wrote.

“We are fortunate to have patient investors. Elevation hosted a Barnett dataroom in 2018 in which 32 companies participated that planted seeds that have sprouted,” Pruett added.

Other operators, including Occidental, Marathon, Fasken, Diamondback, Ares Energy, and Continental Resources are now active in the Permian portion of the play. Others, like Pioneer, plan to tap the deeper Barnett and Woodford resources below their Spraberry and Wolfcamp wells below where they hold acreage and have infrastructure “so the economics are compelling.”

The Barnett is part of the Mississippian formation, thus it is sometimes referred to as the Mississippian or the Meramec in Oklahoma. It is a hybrid formation with brittle, organic rich shales interbedded with siltstone and limestone and self-sources the oil, according to Pruett.

“We’ll see a lot more Barnett and Mississippian drilling permits going forward as the Permian Wolfcamp inventory matures and natural gas prices recover,” Pruett predicted.

Source: Midland Reporter-Telegram

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