Antero Resources has a well permitted in Ohio that has a 13,000 foot lateral, and a total depth (depth plus length) of 23,000 feet.  That’s a ridiculously long well.  That’s 4.35 miles!  That’s impressive.

The well name is the Turkey Unit 2H.  There are two other legs planned for the well pad.  The Turkey Unit 1H will be just as long as the Turkey Unit 2H, but the Turkey Unit 3H looks like it will be shorter.

I like to see longer legs because it minimizes surface disruption.  People live in and move to West Virginia because of it’s wild beauty.  Oil and gas development has changed that to some extent.  Parts of rural West Virginia are becoming increasingly industrialized, with well pads, pipelines, compressor stations, and other development associated with the oil and gas industry scattered all over the place.  This is particularly true of the northern panhandle, in Marshall and Wetzel Counties, and along the Route 50 corridor west of Clarksburg.

The other thing I like about longer laterals is efficiency.  Longer laterals mean more gas per dollar of investment.  One well pad develops the same number of acres as two, three, or four wells pads.  That means less cost.  When oil and gas companies are consistently making more money on their investment, they can afford to pay better bonuses and royalties to their mineral owners, and better money for acreage disruption to surface owners.

On a slightly different note, one thing that’s interesting to me is that the laterals will be about 700 feet apart.  That means that they expect the cracks from the frack job to extend out to about 300-350 feet out from the lateral.  I suspect they don’t want the cracks to touch, as they would lose frack pressure into the neighboring well.