Chevron builds 'from shale to scale' in the Permian
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Chevron-builds-from-shale-to-scale-in-the-13681834.php March 12, 2019
Energy major Chevron took oil and gas development in the booming Permian Basin to a large-scale manufacturing mode and now is beginning to drill West Texas oil wells from Houston control rooms, Chevron Chief Executive Michael Wirth said Tuesday at the CERAweek conference.
Chevron and Texas rival Exxon Mobil made waves last week when they said they each plan to produce almost 1 million barrels of oil equivalent a day from the Permian within five years - roughly triple their current outputs.
Chevron is taking its long-held legacy acreage in the Permian - more than 2 million net acres - and adding its size and technological advancements to rapidly ramp up production volumes. Chevron also acquired a lot of extra Permian land over the years through its Texaco and Unocal Corp. acquisitions, Wirth said.
Chevron initially sat back and waited as smaller companies eventually found success in the Permian with horizontal drilling techniques and hydraulic fracturing, called fracking.
"Trial and error may not be our wheelhouse, but it's technology and scale," Wirth said, arguing that Chevron specializes in factory-mode drilling.
"In a factory-drilling operation you do the same thing many times, and quickly you learn better ways to do things," Wirth said....
