Modern oil drilling techniques put old style in rear view mirror
The sun shines through the clouds as it begins to set behind a pumpjack, March 30, 2022, outside of Goldsmith, Texas. (Odessa American File Photo)
The Permian Basin's oil production boom has largely been driven by great improvements in drilling equipment and techniques including advanced seismic imaging, real-time downhole sensors and subsurface modeling.
That's according to the Texas Oil & Gas and Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners associations, who say modern day oil and natural gas companies are innovation and technology companies.
Todd Staples
"These advances are increasingly powered by artificial intelligence, letting operators map oil-bearing formations thousands of feet underground with remarkable precision," TXOGA President Todd Staples said. "This is a high-tech industry that demands a highly skilled workforce, pairing seasoned hands with technicians, engineers and data specialists.
"That is why the oil and natural gas industry invests in talent at every level, partnering with public high schools, community colleges and four-year universities to build the skilled workforce Texas needs today and into the future."
From 2015 to 2025, Staples said, oil production in the Permian Basin increased by 430% even as the industry drilled more efficiently, which he said is a testament to the men and women in the oilpatch who have embraced technology to deliver more with less and keep Texas the world's trusted energy leader.
The Permian Basin pumps 6.8 to seven million barrels of oil per day, accounting for nearly half of all U.S. crude oil production.
TIPRO President Ed Longanecker said the transformation of oil and gas drilling over the past decade ranks among the most significant industrial revolutions in American energy history.
"The industry is now routinely accomplishing what would have been considered technically impossible a generation ago, doing so faster with fewer people and at lower cost per barrel than at any prior point," Longanecker said. "The shift from vertical to horizontal drilling fundamentally changed the economics of the business.
"Wells that once went straight down now descend vertically, curve through the build section and extend horizontally through the productive formation for extraordinary distances."
In the Permian Basin, he said, average lateral lengths have grown by more than half since 2015 with the majority of wells now exceeding two miles in horizontal reach and the longest conventional straight laterals stretching beyond four miles.
"A related technique, the U-turn or horseshoe well, extends reservoir contact further by drilling the lateral out in one direction, executing a 180-degree turn and returning in the opposite direction from the same surface location," Longanecker said. "Shell first applied the approach in the Permian in 2019 and adoption has accelerated since with approximately 235 U-turn wells drilled across U.S. shale plays in 2025 alone and more than 350 total drilled across Lower 48 basins to date.
"Operators including Matador Resources, Vital Energy and Comstock Resources report average cost savings of roughly $3 million per horseshoe well compared to drilling two separate shorter laterals."
He said Vital Energy applied the technique to a stacked multi-zone pad in the Midland Basin with a 12-well horseshoe development approaching 120,000 total lateral feet across all wells.
Ed Longanecker
"These extended laterals, whether straight or horseshoe configuration, contact dramatically more reservoir rock per well and per surface location, which is the fundamental driver behind the industry's ability to produce more with fewer rigs," Longanecker said. "The precision with which operators locate and stay within the productive zone results from several interlocking technologies.
"Before the drill bit turns, operators build detailed subsurface models using three-dimensional seismic imaging, which maps underground formations by analyzing how sound waves reflect off different rock layers."
He said modern seismic analysis has advanced to four-dimensional applications, allowing operators to track how reservoir conditions change across a field over time and telling geologists where productive formations are located, how thick they are and which areas hold the greatest economic potential.
"Once drilling begins ‘Measurement While Drilling' and ‘Logging While Drilling' systems take over," Longanecker said. "Housed in the drill collar just above the bit these tools transmit real-time data to the surface every few seconds through pressure pulses in the drilling fluid.
"They continuously measure wellbore inclination, direction and orientation, allowing directional drillers to steer the bit with precision through a target zone that may be only a few dozen feet thick at depths of several miles."
He said Logging While Drilling tools simultaneously measure formation properties including gamma radiation, resistivity and porosity, giving geologists a continuous picture of exactly what rock the bit is passing through.
"This feedback loop enables operators to keep a lateral precisely within the most productive interval across its entire length, a practice called geosteering," Longanecker said. "The concept of a dry hole has been largely rendered obsolete in developed shale plays."
He said the risk today is not whether oil is present but how productively it can be extracted.
"Rotary steerable systems have further refined directional control, replacing older slide drilling techniques with continuous rotation while simultaneously steering the bit," Longanecker said. "The result is a smoother, more accurate wellbore drilled faster and with less mechanical wear.
"Baker Hughes introduced its PermaFORCE line of drill bits in 2025, specifically optimized for rotary steerable applications in extended laterals," Longanecker said. "SLB and other service companies have introduced comparable advances designed to sustain performance across increasingly demanding wellbores."
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