Deals
Shale Drillers Going Long -- Not Deep -- in the Oil Patch
- SM Energy’s $1.6 billion Permian buy is ripe for long wells
- A well in Ohio holds the unofficial record at 18,544 feet
A worker prepares to lift drills to the main floor of a rig in the Permian basin outside of Midland, Texas.
Photographer: Brittany Sowacke/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Long is the new deep. Just ask SM Energy Co., which on Tuesday spent $1.6 billion to expand its acreage in America’s most prodigious oil patch, the Permian Basin.
The unique geologic makeup of the Permian, consisting of multiple layers of oil- and gas-trapping shale that span hundreds of miles, is well suited for a technique that’s allowing producers to pull more crude out of fewer wells. Explorers there are drilling longer and longer wells, running thousands of feet sideways to tap as much of the crude-bearing rock as possible.