Great Scott! Eclipse Drills New Longest Lateral in World – in Utica
Eclipse Resources, a Marcellus/Utica pure play driller headquartered in State College, PA that drills mostly in Ohio, has done it again. Yesterday as part of Eclipse’s first quarter 2017 update, the company announced it has broken its own record for drilling the longest land-based lateral well in the world by drilling a Utica well with a lateral that’s 19,300 feet long (3.7 miles). Incredible! You may recall Eclipse was the previous holder of that record with their Purple Hayes well (18,500 feet long), drilled one year ago (see Eclipse Res. 1Q16: Drills Longest Shale Well Ever! “Purple Hayes”). Eclipse seems to have taken a chapter from Rice Energy by naming their wells with creative names. Purple Hayes, named after the landowner (Hayes). The new record-holder? Great Scott–presumably named after the landowner (Scott). Eclipse reports drilling its newest record setting “Super-Lateral” well, the Great Scott 3H, with a total measured depth of 27,400 feet and completable lateral extension of 19,300 feet in less than 17 days from the drill bit hitting the ground to total depth (called spud to TD) in the company’s Utica Shale condensate area. If you’re an MDN subscriber, you were already expecting this big news. Back in April MDN editor Jim Willis attended the Oil & Gas Investment Symposium in New York City and reported on Eclipse’s session. At the time Jim reported: “They [Eclipse] plan to drill 11 “super lateral” wells that exceed 15,000 feet long. Two wells they hope to drill will break the existing Purple Hayes record–by going to 19,000 feet!” (see Eclipse Resources Touts Big ROI on Long Horizontal Shale Wells). Just a month later and the company is already delivering on its promise. Even bigger news: Eclipse is currently drilling a second well of the same length next to Great Scott! Below is the announcement about Great Scott (I & II), part of the Eclipse 1Q17 update. The latest slide deck included too…
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Pardon me, but may I ask, How long is your lateral? We don’t mean to ask such a personal question, but in this case, size matters. You see, the longer the lateral, the more return on investment (ROI) you get–according to top officials from Eclipse Resources. Eclipse Resources, a Marcellus/Utica pure play driller headquartered in State College, PA that drills mostly in Ohio, fielded top officials at two different events this week to talk about the company’s drilling program–and their impressively long laterals. MDN editor Jim Willis heard Eclipse CEO Benjamin W. Hulburt at the Oil & Gas Investment Symposia (OGIS) in New York on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Eclipse’s vice president of drilling, Oleg Tolmachev, appeared at the Utica Upstream conference at Walsh University in North Canton. They both hit on a theme that struck a chord with us–namely, that by drilling longer lateral Utica wells, the company is drastically lowering the cost per foot of drilling–and by doing so, they raise the ROI, making their shale wells more profitable than their competitors’…
Last week the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auctioned off a second round of properties located in Wayne National Forest (WNF), in Ohio (see 
In early February, Eclipse Resources, a Marcellus/Utica pure play driller headquartered in State College, PA that drills mostly in Ohio, released an operational update for fourth quarter and all of 2016 (see 
Two members of Eclipse Resources’ top management team are playing musical chairs as part of the company’s plan to “accelerate growth” in 2017. Tom Liberatore, currently executive VP and COO is dropping the COO title and becoming executive VP of corporate development and geosciences. Meanwhile, Oleg Tolmachev, currently senior VP of drilling and completions is becoming executive VP and COO. Tolmachev’s star is clearly rising and he is now the man running the Utica/Marcellus drilling program for the company. In the same press release, the company said it has now completed and brought online five Utica wells in Monroe County, OH. The wells are the first dry gas Utica wells to use Eclipse’s new “Gen-3” completion design. What is Gen-3? And what does the musical chairs at Eclipse have to do with Gen-3?…
As we previously noted, last week the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proceeded with an online auction for BLM-controlled land in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest (see 
Everyone loves a Top 5 or Top 10, including MDN. Who are the Top 5 drillers in the Utica Shale? It depends, of course, on your criteria for selecting such a list. One of MDN’s favorite writers on The Motley Fool website, Matt DiLallo, has just published what he calls “The 5 Companies Dominating the Utica Shale Play.” In other words, the Top 5 Utica drillers. Matt points out that in the span of five short years the Utica has become the nation’s second largest shale gas play, behind only the Marcellus. Matt uses a combination of acres-under-lease and number-of-wells-drilled to come up with his list of five drillers who are leading the charge in the Utica. It won’t surprise you to learn that Chesapeake Energy, which was the first company to drill in the Utica under then-CEO Aubrey McClendon, is head-and-shoulders above the rest as the #1 Dominator in the Utica. Some of the others in the Top 5 list may, however, surprise you. Here’s Matt’s excellent roundup of the Utica…
There’s an old saying that goes like this: “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.” Not long ago MDN reported that Eclipse Resources had drilled what is believed to be the longest horizontal well (on land) in the world–the 3.5 mile “Purple Hayes” Utica Shale well (see 
Earlier this month MDN told you about the “Purple Hayes”–a Utica Shale well drilled by Eclipse Resources in Guernsey County, OH that is thought to be the longest shale well every drilled, at 3.5 miles (see