Wow. I have been forwarded Berman's World Oil article declaring the Barnett a loser by several people. I was an original user of Drillinginfo's Barnett Shale Platform, so I kind of knew Berman was off base but it wasn't worth my time to counter it. Actually, I was hoping no one would. More opportunities for Papa.
Allen Gilmer, Ramona Hovey, and Jason Simmons, the authors of the Platform published by DI's Energy Strategy Partners group, just published a stinging counter to Berman's article.
http://info.drillinginfo.com/wireline/?p=164
In short, what they say is that
1) Berman's "high grading" of Barnett wells is anything but,
2) Because of this, Berman is not able to differentiate between good an bad operators,
3) Misses the whole "Marginal Operator" concept that is emerging in these plays (ie, as they put it in a speech I heard, "In conventional reservoirs, it didn't matter if you were Dad Joiner or Humble that drilled East Texas Field, the hydrocarbons were waiting to get out, and treated everyone the same. In the Shale Plays, engineering and operational excellence is key. One man's garbage is another man's gold. Or gas, as the case may be".
4) Shows pretty definitively that by properly grading acreage, and choosing your predictive elements a little more carefully, all the statistical and operational elements Berman said were missing from Barnett production not so magically appear.
A pretty definitive slapdown. Woof. Read it and comment what you think.
Here is a link to a couple of seminars they did recently. I heard they might do another one due to requests driven from these two. I heard from a friend that did attend, and a skeptic when he walked in, that it was the best seminar he had ever attended.
http://www.info.drillinginfo.com/marketing/campaigns/2009/fwbasin/0709WBMK0292.html
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