CDL Blog

Will Oil Rates in the WSB South Duvernay Oil Play Ramp Up?

The Duvernay South Oil play in the Pembina/Bigoray area in the West Shale Basin is in its infancy (figure1). Resource play development often follows a pattern of increasingrates in the early stages as operators refine completions strategies; flattening rates in the middle years; and then declining rates as the play moves out of sweet spots and into more fringe acreage (Lenko and Xie, 2018).

Cygnet Soars!

Figures 2a­-c show calendar day oil rates for horizontal Duvernay wells at Cygnet/Joffre, Twining/Huxley and Pembina/Bigoray. Oil rates in Vesta’s wells at Cygnet/Joffre in the East Shale Basin (ESB) show a nice acceleration with time, and the play has not yet reached the flattening out stage. Twining/Huxley (ESB) rates don’t show a clear upward trend, but the wells overall are good producers. The upward trend may be masked as rates at Twining are usually higher than at Huxley (Horton, 2019). At Pembina/Bigoray (WSB), a handful of wells operated by Baytex, Teine and Crescent Point came on-stream in 2018, with early rates generally less than 300 bopd. It will be interesting to watch this play develop, and time will tell if oil rates in this area will trend upwards.