Can Frac Crews Really Complete 700 Stages Per Quarter? Local Energy 31

Peter Brecht00:00

Alright, Wade, another week, but this week's a little different because I've actually met you in person finally. Yeah, Oklahoma City last week. It was a great time out in the city. Gosh, just yeah, yeah, yeah, the National was absolutely fantastic hotel. Yeah, the food was great. I think I went to every independent coffee shop. I went to...

Wade Spear00:06

That's right. There's a good thing now.

Yep. What do you think of the national?

Gorgeous, right?

Yeah

Peter Brecht00:25

The bombing museum, went to the cowboy museum. The whole, I don't know if you've been there, but they have a room that's full of barbed wire and it goes through the history of barbed wire. I was in there for 30, 45 minutes, just like opening, like I was blown away. I loved every minute of it. And then obviously meeting you and getting to hang out was great too. So ahead of schedule from our October initial plan meeting, still planning on coming out in October, but

Wade Spear00:35

Yeah. Yup.

He had no idea.

Right.

All right.

Peter Brecht00:55

Hopefully to get on a... Yes, that's the plan.

I do have some personal news for you that I want to share, which is that I watched Interstellar.

Wade Spear01:03

Okay.

What did you think?

Peter Brecht01:09

Okay, so...

Wade Spear01:10

No. Did you let the weird part really ruin it for you?

Peter Brecht01:14

The whole movie was weird. What are you talking about? Okay, all right. It's a good movie. I'm not going to ever speak badly about a man's favorite movie. I can't do it. I can't do it. But what I will tell you is that I think Chris Nolan thinks he's smarter than he is when he shoots these films. Now, if that puts a complete,

Wade Spear01:17

It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing.

Peter Brecht01:41

I just, I think he puts these Easter eggs in and then thinks that he's clever and I'm like, not really. I don't know. That's my personal opinion. Again, I think it's very visually stimulating and interesting, but I don't know. Yeah. Not sure.

Wade Spear01:53

All right.

I absolutely love it. And I agree with the visually stimulating, interesting. When I watch a movie, man, I just get into the movie. I turn my brain off. I'm not thinking about future plot. I was watching a movie with my daughter last night and she's like, she's saying what's going to happen next. And I was like, that just sounds like an exhausting way to watch a movie. And so think I get more into the entire feel of the movie more than trying to break it apart. I'm not, I also love Interstellar. So I've probably watched it like...

At least eight to ten times. And so, I have thought about it. I love all the little details and all that stuff. And like, I don't think it's like pretentious or anything like that. I love that the sound in the background on Miller's planet represents like, it represents a passing of time on Earth. Wasn't a year. It was like, yeah, it was like every second was like seven days or so. I can't remember what it was. But like, I just love like

Peter Brecht02:30

No, yeah.

It's like 23 years or something. Some bizarre number, yeah.

Right.

Wade Spear02:47

Finding out those little things like long after the fact after I've watched the movie, so.

Peter Brecht02:51

I

I think I had to watch it. Obviously I don't watch a ton of movies. And so when someone says, Hey, you have to watch this. Now the other problem, I'll throw this out there. I don't know if you're married to a woman like my wife, but I watched it with my wife and the whole time she's like, what's going on? And I'm like, I can't tell you what's going on because you keep asking what's going on. And so it's hard to explain. I maybe I have to watch it again by myself and true, but I don't know if I have three hours to do that again.

Wade Spear03:03

Huh. Okay.

Okay.

I'm definitely

Not movie talker. No, I don't want to talk about what's going on, whatever. If I don't understand, I'm like, it's only because I'm not supposed to understand and they're going to reveal it later. So that's kind of where I am. Yeah. I was going say, if you didn't like Interstellar,

Peter Brecht03:22

Yeah.

Right. Right.

So my promise to you before I come out to Oklahoma again, all right, so I've got Tenet to watch. Have...

I'm gonna watch it though.

Wade Spear03:42

Maybe

You shouldn't watch Tenet. It's the one, like everybody loves Interstellar. Go to Rotten Tomatoes. Everybody loves Interstellar. Tenet is really like a lightning rod.

Peter Brecht03:45

I'm gonna do it, I have to.

Okay, well I'm gonna do it anyways.

And then you said the smartest guys in the room or smartest, is it something? Okay, then Ron, okay. I got that, more realistic. And then, gosh, there was one more that you told me to watch and I'll remember as soon as we stop recording, but I'm gonna make sure I watch all of them because I think it's important, it's kinda like getting to know Wade by what he likes to watch, so it's good to know. Two.

Wade Spear03:59

Yeah, Enron. Yeah, Enron, the smartest guys in the room. That's documentary. That one, that one's great.

Okay.

Okay, Tombstone? Have you ever seen Tombstone?

Peter Brecht04:18

No,

That was the one. That's the movie we're talking about. I have not seen Tombstone.

Wade Spear04:22

You've got to see Tombstone. Don't tell anybody if you don't like Tombstone.

Peter Brecht04:23

Yeah, I believe it. Now,

To be fair with movies, and this is the last point that I'll make, I really like movies that are more realistic. So I watched The Martian with Matt Damon. I loved that movie. I've watched that one because I think that it's plausible. Like what he goes through, I think could happen. And then I don't know, there's another one you and your wife might like, which is Fly Me to the Moon with Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson. Have you seen that?

Wade Spear04:28

Okay.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Yes,

Where they faked the moon landing. We saw that. Yeah, that was pretty entertaining. Yeah, that was a fun one.

Peter Brecht04:49

Yeah, I think it was a good one. Yeah,

It's more of a rom com than anything else. All right. Now off to exactly all right. Well, off to oil and gas land. Someone had commented or asked if I was actually learning anything from talking to you or if I just spent the entire episode staring blankly into the screen while you talked. So to rectify that, I would like you to quiz me on something.

Wade Spear04:56

Right. Little lighter.

Peter Brecht05:18

And we'll just see if I get it right or wrong.

Wade Spear05:18

Okay.

Something that we've talked about before or something brand new? I hadn't thought about something that we, okay, something we talked about. All right. All right. Well, you're to hit on some high points. All right. I don't know, I could get really specific. All right. Can you tell me a couple different types of artificial lifts?

Peter Brecht05:23

That's probably something we've talked about. Yeah, I don't need something.

My gosh, okay.

Wade Spear05:42

Or

Why would we choose one other than the other or something like that?

Peter Brecht05:45

Okay, I just think the only thing that comes to mind is ESPs. And that's the one acronym that comes to mind is ESPs. I know that there was plunger lift somewhere in there. I don't know if that's correct. And then there were two other acronyms that I can't remember. It was like gas assisted lift maybe, GAPL, yeah, GAPL, yeah.

Wade Spear05:59

That's right, at that. Underlift is definitely one them. That is 100%.

Gattil, gas assisted plunge lift.

Yeah. Look at that, That's really good. You've pretty much hit three of the biggest ones. Would say gas lift is a big one. Plunger is a big one. You've also got ESPs. And then maybe a fourth one that's a big one too, but it's more like it's a rod pump. So those are the ones with the big horse's head out there and pump jacks and all that stuff.

Peter Brecht06:12

So that's all I have, that's all I remember from artificial lift. Okay. Okay.

Okay.

How

Did I miss the rod pump? That's like, that is the visual that I get when I think of, a pump jack. So.

Wade Spear06:39

I think you just proved that you were definitely paying attention, that you're definitely learning. That's right, that's good.

Peter Brecht06:43

I'm trying to I mean, yeah still thankful for

Scott coming on but no I really just I want to make sure everyone knows so I think we might do this every week or you asked me a question about something we've talked about and so yeah Exactly. You it. Gotta keep it fresh. Alright So kind of getting into last week again, we had the mid con and energy forum and we had a great time out there We actually went on a podcast as guests with Matt Hill and Let's see who is Josh

Wade Spear06:47

Yep.

Okay, all right, we'll do a pop quiz. Right.

Josh,

Peter Brecht07:11

Yeah, just fantastic.

Wade Spear07:11

Yeah, over a arrow, ferro energy surf.

Peter Brecht07:14

Yeah, I had a great time. Have that, their location there and it's, I'm jealous of their podcast. Yeah. Absolutely fantastic. But one thing, we had John Spear that was on stage. I think he was the kind of the headliner at Met Continental. Is that correct? Correct? Is that, that the gentleman? Okay. And

Wade Spear07:16

Yep, have a great setup. Yeah, right, break that note.

Yes.

Spears

And Assault.

Peter Brecht07:33

Just a thinker, you can tell the guy's done a lot of research over the past 40, 50 years. Especially, I think he kind of specializes in Oklahoma City, or Oklahoma as a state, right? Or not necessarily.

Wade Spear07:43

Well,

He lives in, I believe him and his brother both live in Tulsa. Yep. So they're mid-Countdown for sure. But they're looking at data all over, all over.

Peter Brecht07:47

Okay. Okay.

Okay,

So he had that chart and you and I were standing there, kind of watching, was about an hour long. And the chart with the frat crews, how they're completing 700 stages per quarter as compared to 300, before COVID. And it was honestly one of those charts that was just up and to the right constantly. It was, you could, yeah, I could have put a ruler across it and it would have been the same thing.

Wade Spear07:58

Right.

Yes.

Right, almost linear, right? I mean, it was just...

Peter Brecht08:21

So my question and kind of what I'm thinking about like that type of productivity, it's quite uncommon to see that sort of chart, right? Especially when it comes to output. Is that productivity going to continue going up or is there something that we're missing within that data? What are your thoughts?

Wade Spear08:39

I think, I'll say this. Think at some point, you you start hitting, you just start hitting a technical limit, you know. You've kind of, you what I'd say is you grab all the low hanging fruit and then beyond that, I think that you've just, you optimize every single process that goes through there. And I think that's what that graph really shows is that from pre-COVID to now, whenever I saw that, I thought of two things, right? I thought of one, they are spending a lot of time and effort in it.

Just trying to reduce the amount time that they're out there on location, right? So they're trying to speed up the process just year after year after year. And the other thing I thought was too is like, I've always kind of looked at the 2010s as a time of like, man, it was like prime oil and gas. It was amazing to be an oil and gas then. Was a lot of hope, a lot of money going around. There was &A all over the place. I mean, there was kind of like this sky's the limit type of an attitude at that point in terms of like,

We're gonna put 20 wells per section in the merge and we're gonna do all this stuff, you know? And I think since then, what they've realized is like, we have to be a whole lot more economic than what we were kind of in that decade. And I think that that's what that graph illustrates. It just shows companies really kind of battening down the hatches and saying, we need to get faster, we need to get more efficient, we need to get, honestly, we just need to become more economic.

In these kinds of pricing environments. And so I think that's what that graph shows. Now, can it continue to go up and to the right like that indefinitely? I really don't think so. I think that there's a technical limit that you hit. Now, that doesn't mean that there can't be a new technology that comes out that changes that. But right now, the graph showed no signs of breaking over. So I can't say that we're on the cusp of it starting to flatten out. But...

You just can't continue to see that type of improvement year over year to where they move out and they frack a well one day in 10 years from now. For that to happen, there just has to be some kind of a technological change.

Peter Brecht10:29

Well, and I think to your point on the economics, his next point that he made was that pay plans for CEOs and CFOs, they're all geared right now around optimizing cashflow, having a safety net, maybe not taking on similar risks, which I think that's interesting. And when I heard that, my first thought was, again, maybe they're thinking through some things that the general public wouldn't be thinking about in terms of the energy sector.

I don't want to read too deeply into it.

Wade Spear10:57

Well, I

Think what it looks at is like we used to be in this huge growth mode. Like you look in the 2010s and everything, was just, you everything for us is what we call like sticks on the map. You it's like, you you drill a good well and then that proves up like 10 wells around you and you're out selling the value of those 10 wells. Now in reality, since then everybody, and even then there were signs that, like subsequent wells aren't going to be as good as that one and all of that. And so, nobody's out there paying.

For all of those sticks anymore. And so, what we've really got to do is live within cash flow. And I think over the past decade, 15 years, we've really seen that transition. And like you just mentioned here, it's hitting everywhere, not just in our frack efficiency, but also in CEO pay. They want alignment with the care that they're putting out there. And so, they're going to pay for what they want to receive. And I think you see that in that compensation plans as well.

Peter Brecht11:53

I think another thing that was interesting was I forgot the gentleman's name that came on and spoke after John, but the background of a lot of these CEOs isn't necessarily kind of your homegrown guys that have been in oil and gas for a long time. It seems like a lot of them come from the Ivy League schools and they're looking at maybe different things than someone that's putting their hands on tools or like you, trying to come up with.

Wade Spear12:10

Right.

Peter Brecht12:20

You know how to drill a well the best way right I think they're looking at it from a different approach so I've always been intrigued by that perhaps even a little bit intimidated by talking to some of those guys just because of their level of education is different but at the end of the day maybe the big thing is is you know is there a disconnect when you go to Ivy League school maybe you didn't grow up in the oil and gas field or in that culture does that ever cause any issues or strain a company's culture?

Wade Spear12:49

I'm sure it can. I think in every situation, if you've got, like you're talking about kind of an Ivy League education and really heavily into the financials and all of those different things, if you can't go out and execute on the well itself, if you can't get one down, if you're sidetracking or if you're having problems with your production and your flow back and all that stuff, it doesn't matter how well you...

Can work in a spreadsheet if you can't get the oil into the tank or the gas in the pipeline because you're just not going to make any revenue. But at the same time, think you've also seen what I would say is the flip side of it to where if you're purely operationally driven and you've got somebody who's just focused on saying, well, we're just going to get as much as we can out of these wells and we're just going to rip them open, we're going to do all this stuff. At the same time, that can also hurt your economics.

I think in all of these situations, there's a good balance between what I would say is the economic fundamentals of the well, but also being operationally excellent and being able to go out there and execute. Without one of those legs, you just can't stand on your own. Bankruptcy is... Bankruptcy is... Right.

Peter Brecht13:53

Yeah, need, no, it's real. Yeah, there

Was another chart somewhere showing the bankruptcies and the, a lot happens in that space for sure. Well, kind of getting maybe back to a question that we asked, I think two weeks ago, we were talking about glycol pumps. And you'd come back to me and you're like, hey, look, can you ask me the question again? I want to do a little more research on it.

Wade Spear14:01

Okay.

Okay.

Peter Brecht14:17

So I can have a little more of a detailed answer. We're going to do glycol pumps part two, but Wade, what is glycol and how are glycol pumps used?

Wade Spear14:17

That's right.

All right, so my experience on the production side is limited. I did get to spend a good amount of time one week, like when Winter Storm URI came through, working on Dehyse, and that's where your glycol pumps really come in. Looking at a glycol pump, you really can kind of think of it as like the heartbeat of the system, I think. What it's doing is it's moving fluid through. So essentially, you're pumping glycol. You could probably call it dry or lean. I'm not sure of the perfect term there. But you...

You pump this glycol through, it comes into contact with your gas, and what it does is it pulls the water out of it. Now you've got this glycol that's got water there, you've got essentially dry gas that you can send down the pipeline. What you take is that glycol pump continues to move that water-rich glycol, it moves it into a reboiler, that reboiler...

Essentially, just a really hot vessel right there, pressure, temperature. It boils the water out of it. Then when the water leaves that, you've got of lean glycol again. It's ready to take more water. You cycle that back through. A glycol pump is just cycling glycol through that system to remove water from your gas so that you can sit it down in the pipeline and not have all the issues associated with wet gas. Much better than the first.

Peter Brecht15:39

Okay, so glycol,

Yeah, yeah, glycol effectively then is a chemical that is bonding with H2O or something similar to that. Okay. Okay.

Wade Spear15:46

Yeah, it's grabbing

Water out of that gas stream so that you can essentially just separate the water from the gas and then separate the two and send the gas down the pipeline.

Peter Brecht15:58

So you're taking me back to my high school days, my high school chemistry classes, right? So you got that bonding and then that's going into a boiler. How, I follow the question of that, like how is the boiler heated? There like a heating unit? It an electrical system where it's heating it like, it probably varies as well, but.

Wade Spear16:01

All right.

Yeah,

That's a good question. On that one, I'm not as 100%. I would imagine that you've got both systems going. I mean, I'm sorry, a possibility for both systems, but I'm not really sure on exactly which heating source is used there. A lot of times you don't want open flame around your gas. It probably is electrical heating unit.

Peter Brecht16:40

Cool. Guys, if you know the answer to that question as far as how is the boiling in heated, drop it in the comments and I will send you a DM and we'll get connected. We'd just love to learn a little bit more about what you guys are doing on the field there. Yes, please do. So another question that I was coming across is there's companies that do something called spooling and banding. And to me, that sounds like

Wade Spear16:43

That's right. Help us out.

Talk to us about DeHICE.

Okay.

Peter Brecht17:03

Something my mom would do with her quilting class, but it's probably nowhere near that. Could we maybe share about what that is? And it might be a very simple operation, maybe it's a little more complicated, I don't know.

Wade Spear17:06

Right.

Okay, spooling is essentially like putting something that's, let's say, well, spooling is like whenever you're putting a coil back onto a coil unit, right? So you send it down a hole and it has to straighten out, right? It comes out on this coil, it straightens out as you go down a hole. Whenever you're putting it back onto the reel, you're spooling it up. It's kind of like, think of it terms of spooling fishing line or something along those lines.

It's putting line on a reel is really what that is. Now banding is, I don't want to say it's similar to that, but it's another process that could be associated with it. What you can do is you can band, whenever I was doing production stuff down in the Arcoma in Southeast Oklahoma, if you were going to do chemical injection, some people would put chemical and they just drop it in at the well head. But the problem is, that's 8,000 feet down is where you really want your chemical to...

To take effect and just dropping it in on surface. Like it's got a how much volume do you lose? Just coating casing or coating tubing. What you can do is you can install like what you'd call like a capillary string and you put that on your tubing and then you essentially band it. So it's almost like think of, nobody, I don't know that anybody really uses like zip ties, but think of like a metal zip tie that you would put in like every 20,

80, 100 feet, you will essentially band. So you put that, essentially that metal zip tie around there, that ring around there, tighten it down, and it just holds the string next to the tubing. So that would essentially be banding.

Peter Brecht18:46

Okay, so,

And they could do banding on either coil or drill pipe? Is that the idea? Am I getting the right visual?

Wade Spear18:53

I don't know

That you really do it on coil. The problem with coil is that you would be running it in the hole with all that attached to it, and that's on the OD of your coil. I don't know that you really band stuff to coil. I know on the production side, you band onto your tubing and all that stuff, but I'd have to research a little bit more into banding on coil. I would think that'd be a pretty harsh environment to run in 20,000 feet.

With everything, with something banded on the outside of it.

Peter Brecht19:23

When

I feel like coil like the reason coil is there is there's kind of a speed element to it I don't know I could be wrong, but that seems to be more the case. Yeah, okay

Wade Spear19:28

Yeah, 100%. You don't have to make connections. Yep. Yeah,

You can run in hundreds of feet per minute on coil. And you don't have to stop and pick up pipe and then screw it together and do all those different things. So yeah.

Peter Brecht19:39

Right. I can imagine getting

Stuck with that would be tough. There's companies that are dedicated just to spooling and banding. I find that interesting only from the perspective like you have a company that's running Coil. You think they'd be the ones wrapping it up and getting it off off site. But it seems that they might split that responsibility up for some reason.

Wade Spear19:58

Yeah, there'd be a lot of, there's just a lot of integration. I think a lot of companies could save, probably save money by, by doing it themselves, but, there's niche markets everywhere, and so being able to do those things is, I wouldn't be too surprised to see that there's, I might be surprised to say that there's just that they do just coiling and, just banding, but

Peter Brecht20:19

Yeah, yeah,

Yeah. I might be a little bit too direct on that. I'm sure they do more than that, but that was kind of their primary offering. So was kind of interesting to talk with them.

Wade Spear20:26

Gotcha.

And maybe

They're doing some kind of like really, yeah, like really special kind of banding or maybe it's under high pressure or something along those lines. And so it requires some special equipment or whatnot in order to be able to in order to be able to accomplish that. There's so much to learn and so much to do in the oil field. You're just and we'll ever learn everything there is to know about it, you know. And so that also means that there's almost endless opportunity out there to.

Peter Brecht20:39

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Wade Spear20:56

To make money and kind of participate in completing and drilling and producing these wells.

Peter Brecht21:01

Well, and that's part of the reason why our company and talking to these operators directly and talking to the company owner and the guys that are doing the work, it actually rounds out their operations better. Then for us, there's an opportunity to improve their programs. So I wish it was easier sometimes to tell the right story and give the right perspective, but it doesn't always work out that way. Okay, so one thing that Matt

Wade Spear21:14

Right. Yep.

Yeah.

Peter Brecht21:26

Hill had brought up last week was fishbone wells. And I thought I'd ask you about them. I know that I understand they're somewhat maybe not new, but they're not as often used. I'm not sure. But what is a fishbone well and why would it be advantageous to maybe use that method?

Wade Spear21:30

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Right, so a fishbone well would be say a well with multiple horizontals drilling out of a single vertical. Those can be done in a number of different ways. Sometimes they'll hit different benches, you know? So like the first time I'd ever heard of it was like a Bakken Three Forks well up in North Dakota. They'd go in and they'd drill, I can't remember which one they'd drill first. If they'd drill the deeper one first and then the shallower one or the shallower one and then deeper one.

But that essentially drilled two horizontal wells out of that same vertical. Then I'd also heard about some stuff out in Western Oklahoma, and I think it was the Miss Lime, where they'd go out there and they would do four five laterals out of a single vertical. So they'd drill one to the north, and then they'd kind of angle to the northwest and drill one there, and then further to the west and then drill one there. And so, you you've just got all of these producing horizontals out of this single vertical well. It just blows my mind to think about the...

Kind of the complexity of that in regards to what you've got to do with casing strings and being able to do all of that. One of the big reasons why you would do that is because theoretically it would save money in not having to drill multiple verticals. That would be one thing. It's like you drill one vertical well down to seven or 8,000, 10,000 feet, and then you could drill five horizontals instead of having to drill five verticals and five horizontals. So that could save money. The other thing that you could be forced to do it is

Say that you're on land is at a premium, like it's very protected or it's very expensive or just tons of different reasons why you would only, have room for kind of one pad in one area. And so that would help reduce your footprint and you you wouldn't have to have as big of a footprint on surface. The challenge though, I think is like, even though those...

Peter Brecht23:23

Yeah.

Wade Spear23:27

Like number one, like you said, it's just not super common that that's done all the time. So I would think that the, that the risk, associated with mechanical issues is probably greater than what we normally experience. Just, one vertical, one horizontal. The other thing I would think too is, you're putting a lot of eggs in one basket. So say that you've got five miles of horizontal coming out of that one vertical well in this section. Like if you've got a casing link, a leak on your intermediate casing or whatnot, like

That affects all five horizontal wells. Or if you have something happen on surface with your facilities or whatnot, like you've essentially got to shut in. Now you have to shut in five wells for problems with one set of intermediate casing. And so that can definitely increase your risk profile right there.

Peter Brecht24:14

Yeah, and it's not like you're gonna have a drilling engineer that's gonna be like, okay, well, we drilled, this horizontal and we missed, we completely missed any, with no oil, let's just go ahead and drill another one. They're not gonna, keep throwing good money after bad, I'd imagine too. It's more like we're producing and we're gonna try another angle.

Wade Spear24:22

Right.

Well, that's the other thing.

You're usually drilling all of those at the same time. You'll go in and drill one and then you come back right back in. Don't produce it in the meantime. And so you've got five wells drilled before you even know exactly what the zone's going to produce. So that's another great point right there is high uncertainty just in production aside from all the mechanical risk.

Peter Brecht24:33

Really?

Okay, yeah, don't quiz me on that one next week. I don't think I'm ready for it, but anyways, think it's, yeah, exactly. I'm actually, wanna figure out how to get like a whiteboard sort of thing up on this screen while we're doing it because there are certain things I would love to draw out and like, have you go through different pieces. Like for example, another question I have today to kind of go off of that is, and you brought it up in answering the last question, but what is a sidetrack well?

Wade Spear24:51

I'm going to ask you to diagram out to us how that works, all right? Because I'd be really interested to see exactly.

Yeah.

You can do that. We'll figure that out. OK.

Okay, so a sidetrack is where you usually drill down to a certain spot and then you decide, all right, we want to go back and restart somewhere earlier. Now, sometimes a sidetrack, it can happen anywhere. It can happen in the vertical portion of the well, it can happen in a curve, it can happen in a horizontal. A lot of times in the vertical, if you sidetrack, it's poor hole cleaning or significant loss circulation and you get differentially stuck, something along those lines. In the curve, maybe...

Maybe the zone was a lot higher than where you expected it to be. You're drilling your curve and you just can't hit that zone or you don't get build rates from your curve assembly and you're gonna hit low and you're like, all right, pull it back and restart it. In the lateral, same thing, you go out of zone, you can see instability from maybe hitting a shale that you weren't planning on seeing or getting differentially stuck from lost circulation. All those different things can happen, but essentially what you do is you just...

Pull back to a point that you choose and try and drill another hole out of that. So that, that's, side tracking is never something that people are very excited about doing. It's usually whenever you're having issues or trying to prevent issues. Yeah.

Peter Brecht26:18

Yeah.

The

First time I came across it was we were going through well control concepts, And one of it was if you have a blowout and you can't get control of the well, then they'll drill a side track in order to hopefully pull some of the pressure off of it. And so I've come across that before. Never had to see it in action for that purpose, but it's definitely another reason to use it.

Wade Spear26:27

Okay, yeah. Right.

Relieve pressure. Yep, 100%.

Right.

That's 100 % another reason. I'd say that's probably a lot less common, but definitely the case. You should Google it. It reminds me of one of the craziest videos I saw. So there's a well in Russia, I think it was Russia, that they had like this huge blowout and nobody could contain it. And it was like burning for, I don't even, it may have been a decade or two, but it was like this huge, huge pit of just continual fire. And they drilled.

They drilled an offset well down close to it. They put a nuclear bomb in it and exploded it down hole to collapse the formation down there to cut off flow to the surface.

Peter Brecht27:18

I saw that

Photo and this was probably a couple years ago. It's an older photo. I thought, I the comments, everyone was like, this isn't fake, there's no way. So I'm curious, I wanna look it up again now that I've kinda gotten a little deeper into it. Yeah.

Wade Spear27:21

It's old, it's like 70s, something like that I wanna say. Yeah.

There's like a YouTube video out there. Maybe

I'm propagating fake news. But I this thing was like, I saw this video first time like a decade ago. So it was kind of before. And they actually showed video of them like, it looked like they were dropping this. Like it did, it looked like kind of like sending a bomb down hole. And then they submit on top of it. Yeah, oh yeah. And then they submit on top of it and they detonate it and then short time after, all of a sudden the fire goes out on surface and they're like, all right, we finally solved.

Peter Brecht27:38

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And this is before CGI. Yeah.

This sounds like a scene from Armageddon, honestly, trying to take out that asteroid.

Wade Spear28:07

Yep. Well, okay. So another

Cool thing to think about now that you got me going on this is like whenever they get the miners stuck down hole, like have you ever seen that some like the like the coal mine, not coal miners, maybe they are coal miners. But like I remember in what was it Venezuela or somewhere years ago. They're down there like mining coal, they see this collapse and they're stuck down there. Well, they get a rig out there and they drill like this borehole.

Peter Brecht28:12

Yeah.

Some of the craziest, bravest people in the world doing that job. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

Wade Spear28:35

And they go down and use directional drilling tools and all that stuff to get down and actually drill into that little pocket where they're stuck and then they drop down those cages and pull them out and stuff. My gosh. It blows my mind. It almost makes me short of breath just thinking about being stuck down. I think you'd have to knock me out to pull me through 8,000 feet of borehole or whatever they pulled them through. My gosh. Just thinking about getting stuck in there would be the worst thing ever.

Peter Brecht28:46

Yeah.

To...

Just last

Week, I mean I have a fear of heights and I'm afraid of you know small spaces But there's a video of a guy that you know had to find the exit of a cave And I mean he's crawling through he has no room left or right can't I can't do it it but just got yeah

Wade Spear29:12

I can't walk so, no way, no way. No. You didn't tell me you don't like

Heights. We go to dinner at Vast and you don't like heights? All right. All right, as long as we don't sit on the edge right there, all right.

Peter Brecht29:19

But you see I'm secured I'm good. I'm in the middle. We sat in the middle of the building. It's fine. Like we're Yeah, if

I was sitting by the window different story, but no When I was 13 years old, my dad took my brother and I it was a business trip we had the opportunity to go with him to Colorado and There's a huge Canyon out there. I forget the name of it, but I have the video because They had this swing that you would you would strap into and you'd pull this

Wade Spear29:28

Got you.

Okay.

Peter Brecht29:45

You pull this pin and would fly out over the edge of it. So you got my dad in the middle, you got me on the left and my brother on the right and like you're supposed to link arms. And so they bring you up like a hundred feet and then they tell me, hey, when you get to the top, we're going to tell you to pull the pin. So you just hear this tink and I just remember my dad and my brother just screaming as we're going out. Like just think, you I mean that, and that, that, that solidified my fear of heights right there. Like you're looking down this, my gosh, just hoping to,

Wade Spear29:54

Right? Huh.

Alright.

Peter Brecht30:13

Just hoping to God

Wade Spear30:14

That would be.

Peter Brecht30:14

That that cable doesn't snap. Cool. Well, hey, one of the things we actually speaking of going to dinner there at Vast so we were talking about the three people that are always gonna be on a drill pad, as things are happening. And it was one of those things where there's just so much going on and we were talking about so many different things that kind of, kind of,

Wade Spear30:17

No kidding, that would be pretty crazy.

Okay.

Peter Brecht30:39

Didn't gloss over it, but didn't remember everything. So you've got the tool pusher, you've got the drilling contractor, and then there was another individual or person that would be on that site, kind of working along with it. Could you maybe walk me through that a little bit more and who all needs to be there? Who are the critical people when you're drilling a well?

Wade Spear30:43

Right?

Right. Well, whenever I say that, I kind of mean like whenever things are going really south, and you start evacuating wells, normally what happens is the guys who are in charge and most responsible are still there trying to get it under control, until it's a point where there's just no chance, and then you just hope that everybody leaves. But, what we were kind of talking about there was the three people's ones, usually the tool pusher. So that's the guy who's responsible for the rig, he's

He's kind of the head honcho on location in regard to the rig. Then you've got your consultant, your well site consultant, your company man, whatever you want to call him. That's the guy who's out there, usually tons of experience, oftentimes worked their way up through the rig, but they're kind of the representative for the operator out there. Then you've also got your driller, which the driller is the guy who's standing on the floor or on the more modern rigs, sitting in the chair and moving the blocks up and down.

Controlling most of the rig operations. And so those are the three guys that are, I would say, almost always on location, especially in terms of some of those challenging situations.

Peter Brecht32:01

Okay, yeah, and obviously never a good situation when that is the event, but it's interesting to kind of know who those players are in terms of, okay, let's get this thing back under control and keep moving forward. Yeah, absolutely. Perfect. I did have another question for you and this one came up today. And so I'm sort of, I know I give you very brief, brief bullet points of like, topics before, but nitrogen.

Wade Spear32:06

Right.

Yeah, definitely the leaders on the well side.

Hit me with

It. Okay.

Peter Brecht32:28

Yeah, how is

Nitrogen used in drilling operations? And I know it can, it's more than just drilling. I guess it gets used, all the way through production but how's nitrogen used?

Wade Spear32:36

Yeah.

So nitrogen is used a lot of the times, especially I would say probably more on the frac side than it is on the drilling side, but we still use it occasionally on the drilling side. Really what nitrogen is used for is to lower your hydrostatic pressure. All right. And so, if you've got really bad loss circulation or like more often than not and on the drilling side of things, like you're getting ready to pump your cement, right? You've drilled a lateral that has

That doesn't have a very high pore pressure, or you saw a lot of losses on it. Your cement has to be like, say that you drilled it with a nine pound mud weight, or an eight pound mud weight, whatever it is, eight and a half. That cement you're pumping is usually going to be at least 10 and a half. Usually your production cement's around 13 pounds per gallon. But if you think about putting all of that cement down there on pumping it through that formation or pumping around your annulus, like

It's probably going to break down and cause losses because as that cement's going around, it's also got that mud on top of it. And so your hydrostatic pressure is increasing as that cement starts to travel up the annulus and the vertical. So essentially what you can do is you can pump cement, you can pump nitrogen ahead of it in your fluid. And what that does is it decreases the density of that fluid. It lightens the weight of that fluid so that as that cement's coming around,

That heavier cement is offset by a lighter fluid. So you're just trying to keep your bottom hole pressure as low as possible and your ECDs as low as possible. They do the same thing on completion side, when they're doing a drill out along those lines. Now they've gone out in that formation, they fracked it and they're trying to circulate out plug parts and sand and all this different stuff. Well, you're trying to circulate out all this solid matter.

Peter Brecht33:58

Hmm.

Yeah.

Wade Spear34:16

But the formation isn't wanting to hold it. Well, what you can do is you pump nitrogen down with it. It lowers your ECD essentially. Then hopefully, if you pump a certain amount of smoke with your fluid, then you can carry everything out. And as far as nitrogen goes, it's used, it's inert. It's not going to explode and all that stuff. You start mixing oxygen with all this stuff and it can be problematic.

Peter Brecht34:36

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Got it. And that

Actually reminds me, so there was a comment we had talked about underbalance drilling a couple weeks ago. And the comment was, and this is what I was pulling up was, the thought is that more hydrostatic pressure you have, the easier it would be to drill through the reservoir pressure. So would they use nitrogen in the sense that, okay, we're gonna reduce the hydrostatic pressure on underbalance drilling, or are they not even correlated?

Wade Spear34:48

Yeah. Yep.

You can, yeah, you can. You could use nitrogen to reduce your hydrostatic. I wouldn't say it's common all the time in terms of just trying to get better ROP. It's not cheap. It's a little bit of a task to do from an operational standpoint. And so it's not frequently used. We'll also use it sometimes if you're differentially stuck. So this is a great topic. When you're differentially stuck, essentially what happens is you're drilling along.

Peter Brecht35:10

Okay. Okay.

Wade Spear35:33

And you have losses to the formation and there's essentially a vacuum created. And if it happens right at your BHA, which is where your OD is the biggest, usually in your drill string, your OD is the biggest right at your BHA, like at your motor, your drill collars, what can happen is it sucks you next to the wall and creates this seal right there. And so essentially what's happening is a vacuum is just holding your BHA against the wall. You can't.

Pull out of it, you can't push out of it. You'll still have full circulation usually, but you cannot move your drill pipe. And so a lot of times what you can do is you try and offset that vacuum that's created by pumping nitrogen around and lowering your hydrostatic pressure. So that way, your pressure differential is smaller and you can pop your BHA or your drill string free. A lot of times you'll pump around.

Peter Brecht36:21

I would, that's crazy.

Wade Spear36:24

It really is. It's a crazy scenario to think that like this little bit of vacuum pressure can prevent you. You could pull 200 250,000 pounds over and you still can't get it free and you'll have full circulation. It's not like you're packed off or anything. It's just this vacuum that's kind of around you and there's a number of different other things you can do. You can pump diesel around to lower the hydrostatic. You can pump nitrogen. A lot of times you can pump either diesel or there's a

There's all different kinds of products like chemical products that will sit right there. You can spot it and it tries to either, like degrade the formation. Like if you're in a lime or whatnot, you can like use a hydrochloric acid to eat away at that lime and hopefully it breaks that seal and you can pop free or you can pump, a different chemical that will kind of eat away at your wall cake to try and break that seal. And then you can get free, but there's a lot of different things you can do.

Trying to get that pipe unstuck, but diesel, nitrogen, those are a couple ways that you can do that.

Peter Brecht37:21

I feel like we haven't exhausted that topic yet, but one thing that you mentioned was that you'll still have circulation. In what situations would circulation stop or would you ever want to stop circulating the mud for any reason?

Wade Spear37:25

All this.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So a couple of different reasons. Let's just in reference to what we just talked about, what I would say is a pack off event, right? So getting stuck is just a really general term, right? That just means I can't move my drill pipe or I can't do what I want with it. I can't come out of the hole. I can't go down. That's what we'd call getting stuck. I would want to shut off my pumps if what would happen is if I experienced what I'll just call a pack off, right? And so

Essentially a pack off is like something is grabbing around you and you cannot circulate past it. So we'll be pumping mud down hole through the drill bit. And what we'll see is our returns on surface start to decrease, but the pump pressure starts going up. And so that tells me right there, like I'm starting to experience a pack off. Now is that formation falling in on us? Is it swelling shale? Like there's a number of different things it could be. Sometimes it could be internal. Like if you get bit stuck and

Between your rotor and your stator, there's a good seal right there, you know? And so you can do a number of different things to diagnose, is it external to the pipe, is it internal to the pipe? But that's when you would want to shut off those pumps is in a scenario where you're getting packed off. And so a lot of times one of easiest ways, one of the determining factors of hey, are we packed off or are we differentially stuck? If you've got full circulation, you're not packed off, you're differentially stuck.

Peter Brecht39:00

Hmm, okay, interesting. There's all these like, answer a question and I've got 15 others that kind of spring out of it and then it's pretty interesting to hear.

Wade Spear39:01

Yeah.

Right.

Well, it's funny, it's the things

That we do every day, that you don't think are unique or special, but to somebody who doesn't live it or hasn't been doing it for 15, 20 years, like kind of everything's new. So yeah.

Peter Brecht39:21

Yeah, yeah, well, Wade, I don't know. I don't have any, any other questions for this week. I've got so many more, but I want to save the goodness and be respectful of everyone's time. Thank you so much for meeting up this week and talking, what do you got going on the rest of this week and anything fun?

Wade Spear39:27

Okay.

Okay.

Just working. We're drilling some wells right now and really enjoying that. And so that's been going good. Other than that, the weather in Oklahoma this week is is actually amazing. The high today, 85 degrees. No, no. 8085 degrees is what it is. So it's awesome. The kids want to go. The kids want to go camping. So I think we may go camping tomorrow night and spend a little bit time outside.

Peter Brecht39:50

No, I heard it's boiling hot. I heard it's really hot, no?

All right, I'm gonna have to call Carly.

That's right, it's Thursday. We got the weekend coming up pretty quick. Cool, well thank you guys for tuning in to Local Energy. I'll be moving this weekend with my family into a new place. Yeah, I'm super excited. Nothing better than being 35 and trying to move your entire life. I know, I know. We'll see you guys next week. Thank you.

Wade Spear40:08

That's right.

Have fun with that.

I'll wait till you're 45 to end up, man.