Data Analytics Study Clarifies Parent/Child Well Relationships in Unconventional Basins

The authors write that child-well performance increases with spacing and decreases with infill timing and that the parent cumulative production at child-well completion is an effective indicator of child-well performance.

October 1, 2022

Journal of Petroleum Technology

Bakken Basin spacing and parent produced BOE heatmap colored by First 12 Months percent change.

In this study, parent/child well pairs for wells completed within the last 7 years in nine different unconventional basins are identified using a Python code applied to public data. These basins are the Bakken, Delaware, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Marcellus/Utica, Midland, Niobrara, Powder River, and Scoop/Stack Basins. The study finds that, as stated in the technical literature, child-well performance increases with spacing and decreases with infill timing. In the complete paper, the authors show that parent cumulative production [barrel of oil equivalent (BOE)] at the child-well completion is a better indicator of child-well performance.

Challenges of Child Wells

Many different factors influence the completion and production of a child well.

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