Activity in the Neuqen Basin intensified over the past year, with operators targeting the world class Vaca Muerta unconventional shale with horizontal well drilling and multistage fracking completions.
Over 2,200 horizontal wells are drilled in the basin, with about 12 million meters drilled. YPF, Argentina’s state own national oil company, drilled about half of these wells.
YPF drills in acreage close to the Neuquina Basin depocenter, with Shell, Pan American, Vista, Pluspetrol and Tecpetrol also very active around it.
Activity levels increased constantly since 2017 (with a pandemic induced break in 2020/21), and reached around 375 horizontal wells drilled per year.
Hotspots of Activity are seen in Loma Campana (YPF), La Amarga Chica (YPF), Fortin De Piedra (Tecpetrol), Banduria Sur (YPF), Bajada de Palo (Vista), La Calera (Pluspetrol), El Orehano (YPF), Cruz De Lorena (Shell) and Lindero Atravesado (Pan American).
Another 30,000 wells are drilled in the basin, targeting other shallow reservoirs (Quintuco, Agrio, Centenario, etc), mostly with vertical wells.
The Vaca Muerta towers in term of wells and meters drilled in the past decade, with ever increasing numbers in recent years
The Vaca Muerta shale has tremendous thickness (averaging 250 meters), with up to five highly prospective zones identified. Current development barely scratched the stacking potential of the formation.
With the political landscape stabilizing (and associated surface risk decreasing), activity in the Neuquen area is expected to increase. A 500,000 barrel per day oil pipeline is under construction, linking facilities in Loma Campana to Punta Colorada on the Atlantic coast, and is expected to be operational by 2027. Gas egress is also increasing with expansion of the Néstor Kirchner Pipeline to Buenos Aires.
Chinook Consulting Services provides wellsite geology and reservoir navigation services to upstream operators, with 14,000 wells supervised to date. One of our focus areas is unconventional shale development, where Chinook Geosteering Services performs reservoir navigation with software assisted remote geosteering methods.
Over 3,500 unconventional shale wells were guided by our geosteering teams from our remote operations space in Calgary. Our expertise ranges from Montney and Duvernay in Canada, Permian and Eagle Ford in Texas, La Luna in Colombia, to Vaca Muerta in Argentina and beyond.
