For years, speed defined shale success. Faster spud-to-TD times, record lateral footage, and ever-shorter drilling curves were the industry’s primary scorecards. But the data coming out of today’s Permian Basin tells a different story:
Modern shale isn’t won by drilling faster. It’s won by sequencing better.
Recent development activity across both the Delaware and Midland basins shows that leading operators are no longer optimizing individual steps in isolation. Instead, they are engineering the entire development cadence—from permitting to facilities—with intention.
From Speed to Structure: What Changed?
Early shale rewarded speed because uncertainty was high. Operators needed rapid feedback loops to understand rock quality, landing zones, and completion designs. The fastest way to learn was to drill and produce wells as quickly as possible.
That phase is largely over.
In mature basins, operators now know:
- Where the rock works
- How stacked benches interact
- What standardized well designs deliver returns
- How infrastructure must scale over time
Once subsurface uncertainty declines, raw drilling speed stops being the advantage. Coordination replaces it.
Example 1: Fast Drilling, Slow by Design — Delaware Basin
A recent Delaware Basin project by Greenlake Energy illustrates this shift perfectly.
On paper, the drilling phase looks aggressive:
- All wells licensed on a single day
- Uniform Wolfcamp well designs
- A tight, ~37-day drilling window
- Single-rig, pad-based execution
By historical standards, that’s fast.
But production did not follow immediately. Instead, completions were intentionally delayed by roughly 8–9 months, allowing the operator to:
- Align frac timing with capital budgets
- Optimize service utilization
- Ensure surface facilities were fully ready
- Treat drilled wells as optional inventory rather than forced execution
The result was a project that took well over a year from permitting to production readiness—not because of inefficiency, but because time itself was used as a control lever.
Fast drilling didn’t define success. Sequencing did.
Sequencing Is the New Optimization Lever
Modern shale value is now created by how activities are ordered, not how quickly any one activity occurs.
The best programs:
- Batch permits instead of filing opportunistically
- Compress drilling into predictable windows
- Delay completions when it improves capital efficiency
- Finalize facilities before bringing production online
- Treat air permits as late-stage “go-live” signals
This is manufacturing logic applied to reservoirs.
Example 2: Tight Sequencing, Shorter Cycle — Midland Basin
Contrast that with Sabalo II Operating in the Midland Basin.
In Section 28 of Block 3, the cadence looks very different—but the philosophy is the same:
- Permitting spread over months, not days
- Drilling executed at steady ~36-day intervals
- Single-rig consistency
- Completions tightly clustered into a ~21-day window
- Facilities and air permits arriving after drilling and completions
Here, the system is already mature. There’s no need to build optionality through long DUC cycles. Instead, Sabalo II runs a repeatable drill-hold-complete-permit-produce workflow that converts capital to production efficiently and predictably.
The key takeaway:
They aren’t drilling faster than peers—they’re sequencing with confidence.
Why “Delays” Are Often a Feature, Not a Bug
One of the most misunderstood signals in shale development is time.
In both examples:
- Longer timelines did not indicate problems
- Shorter timelines did not indicate haste
What mattered was alignment.
Delayed completions, extended permitting windows, or late-stage air permits are often deliberate choices designed to:
- Reduce execution risk
- Smooth capital deployment
- Avoid surface bottlenecks
- Improve long-term asset performance
A drilled well waiting on the right moment is not stalled—it’s staged.
Facilities and Air Permits: The Real Finish Line
Another consistent signal across both projects is the role of air permits.
In neither case did air permits signal the start of development. They marked the end:
- Facilities installed
- Emissions sources finalized
- Transition from construction to sustained production
This reflects a fundamental shift in shale thinking:
The well is no longer the project. The pad is.
Manufacturing Shale Means Thinking in Systems
Modern shale development is no longer a checklist of steps. It’s a system where:
- Drilling speed is a constraint, not a goal
- Completions are scheduled, not rushed
- Facilities are synchronized, not retrofitted
- Regulatory approvals are timed, not chased
Both the Delaware and Midland examples show different expressions of the same truth: the competitive advantage now lies in system design, not raw pace.
Bottom Line
The shale industry hasn’t slowed down—it has matured.
Today’s most successful projects show that drilling fast is easy.
Sequencing well is hard—and that’s where value is created.
Modern shale isn’t about how quickly a rig can turn to the right.
It’s about knowing exactly when every part of the system should move.
