Find out where higher well spend is creating production, and where it is not.
More sand, more water, longer laterals, tighter spacing, larger facilities, and more complex completion designs do not automatically create better economics.
In some areas, additional design intensity produces meaningful uplift. In others, operators may be spending more to achieve results that nearby competitors are reaching with leaner development programs.
The challenge is proving which is which.
BasinIQ helps operators connect well design, capital spend, operational execution, reservoir context, and production response. By comparing internal drilling, completion, cost, and production data with public records, offset performance, competitor activity, type curves, and SynMax intelligence, teams can identify where added capital is working—and where established development assumptions may need to change.
Stop paying for design intensity the rock does not reward.
Request a Well Design Optimization Demo
Higher Intensity Does Not Always Mean Higher Value
Most operators understand their own wells in detail.
They know the lateral length, stage count, proppant loading, fluid intensity, drilling days, facilities cost, lease operating expense, and total well spend.
The harder question is whether those choices are producing a better economic result than other designs in comparable rock.
That question becomes difficult when cost data, completion records, production history, type curves, geological context, and offset performance live in separate systems. Public data adds another layer of complexity because design and production information may be incomplete, inconsistent, or difficult to compare across operators.
Without a clear benchmark, expensive development templates can continue for years simply because they have become standard practice.
Teams may keep adding capital without knowing whether:
- Higher completion intensity is producing proportional uplift
- Longer laterals are improving capital efficiency
- Tighter spacing is increasing recovery or creating interference
- Larger facilities are required by actual operating conditions
- Competitors are achieving similar production with leaner designs
- Underperformance is caused by reservoir quality, design, or execution
- A design that works in one bench is being repeated where it does not
Challenging an established well design is difficult. Engineers need more than a correlation or a single offset comparison. They need defensible evidence that connects design choices to production response and economic performance.
BasinIQ Connects Spend to Performance
BasinIQ brings internal and external evidence into one development view.
Teams can analyze operated-well data alongside nearby competitor wells, public completion records, production history, type curves, spacing, reservoir context, and observed field activity.
This allows technical and commercial teams to determine whether higher spend is producing measurable value—or simply increasing the cost of achieving the same result.
BasinIQ can help identify:
- Wells with high spend but limited production uplift
- Lower-intensity designs that delivered comparable or stronger results
- Completion variables associated with better performance in a defined area
- Development templates that should vary by bench, formation, spacing, or reservoir quality
- Wells that underperformed because of execution rather than design
- Areas where additional intensity appears economically justified
- Opportunities to reduce cost without materially reducing production
- Cases where lower spend could leave recoverable production behind
The objective is not to make every well cheaper.
It is to spend where the reservoir and production response justify it.
From Standard Design to Evidence-Based Design
Compare like with like
- BasinIQ helps teams compare wells within relevant geological, geographic, and operational contexts rather than relying on broad basin averages.
- Evaluators can group wells by variables such as:
- Formation and bench
- Reservoir quality
- Landing zone
- Lateral length
- Spacing
- Stage count
- Proppant and fluid intensity
- Completion timing
- Operator
- Development sequence
- Parent-child relationship
This creates a more defensible basis for separating true design effects from differences in rock quality or operating conditions.
Connect capital to incremental production
Higher-cost designs should be evaluated against the additional production they generate—not production alone.
BasinIQ can support analysis of measures such as:
- Cost per BOE
- Cost per lateral foot
- Cost per stage
- Cost per pound of proppant
- Cost per incremental barrel
- Production uplift relative to added completion intensity
- Payout or return differences among comparable designs
This helps teams identify designs that look technically strong but remain economically weak.
Benchmark against competitors
Internal performance only tells part of the story.
BasinIQ helps compare operated wells with nearby competitors using available completion, production, spacing, and activity data. Teams can see where competitors may be achieving similar or stronger results with lower intensity, different spacing, shorter cycle times, or leaner development approaches.
The goal is not to copy another operator’s design.
It is to understand whether the competitive evidence challenges your own assumptions.
Separate design problems from execution problems
A poor result does not always mean the design was wrong.
Underperformance may result from drilling difficulty, completion execution, downtime, facility constraints, artificial-lift performance, offset interference, or other operational conditions.
By connecting design data with production and operating history, BasinIQ helps teams determine whether a well underperformed because of the development concept or because the plan was not executed as intended.
How the Workflow Works
1. Connect your well data
Provide BasinIQ with approved drilling, completion, cost, production, and operating data for the wells or development program under review.
2. Benchmark the designs
BasinIQ compares operated wells with relevant offsets, competitor performance, public records, type curves, reservoir context, and development variables.
3. Identify the changes worth testing
Your team receives a clear view of where design intensity is earning a return, where performance does not justify the spend, and which assumptions should be tested before the next program.
BasinIQ complements the engineering and economic workflows your teams already use. It does not replace technical judgment. It gives engineers stronger evidence for applying it.
Questions Your Team Can Ask
BasinIQ can help answer questions such as:
- Are we spending more per well than nearby competitors for comparable production?
- Which of our wells appear over-engineered relative to their production response?
- Are higher-intensity completions generating enough uplift to justify the added cost?
- Which competitors are achieving similar or better results with leaner designs?
- What is our cost per BOE compared with relevant offset wells?
- Which design variables are most associated with stronger production in this area?
- Are we applying high-intensity designs in lower-quality rock?
- Which wells underperformed despite higher spend?
- Where could we reduce cost without materially reducing production?
- Should the development template change by formation, bench, spacing, or area?
- Is underperformance more closely associated with design or operational execution?
- Which assumptions should we test in the next development program?
These questions help move the conversation from “What did we spend?” to “What did the additional spend actually deliver?”
Why It Matters
Capital discipline depends on knowing which dollars create incremental value.
Over-engineering can quietly erode returns across an entire development program. A single design choice may appear manageable at the well level, but repeating an unnecessary cost across dozens of wells can materially weaken asset economics.
Under-engineering creates a different risk. Cutting intensity without understanding reservoir response may leave recoverable production behind or reduce long-term value.
The answer is not automatically more intensity or less intensity.
The answer is a design matched to the rock, operating environment, and economic objective.
Without that evidence, teams risk:
- Repeating expensive assumptions across future wells
- Approving capital that does not produce proportional returns
- Applying one development template across materially different reservoir conditions
- Misdiagnosing execution problems as design failures
- Reducing spend in areas where higher intensity is actually justified
- Falling behind competitors with more capital-efficient programs
BasinIQ gives drilling, completions, reservoir, production, planning, and finance teams a shared basis for evaluating those tradeoffs.
What Better Design Decisions Look Like
For drilling and completions teams, this means identifying which design variables deserve further testing.
For reservoir and production teams, it means understanding how well architecture and completion intensity affect actual production response.
For planning and finance teams, it means allocating capital based on evidence rather than inherited templates.
For asset leaders and executives, it means being able to defend why the next development program costs what it does.
The outcome is not simply a lower-cost well.
It is a development program that spends deliberately—adding capital where it creates value and removing it where it does not.
Built for Teams Responsible for Well Economics
BasinIQ supports:
- Drilling and completions
- Reservoir engineering
- Production engineering
- Development planning
- Operations
- Finance
- Asset teams
- Executive leadership
- A&D and corporate development
Know Which Dollars Are Working
BasinIQ helps operators move from tracking what they spent to understanding whether the spend worked.
It connects well design, cost, execution, reservoir context, production response, and competitor performance into one development view. Teams can see where wells may be overbuilt, where competitors appear more capital-efficient, where added intensity is justified, and where future designs should change.
Before repeating the current template across the next development program, determine whether the evidence supports it.
Build wells for the production response—not for the assumption.
Request a Well Design Optimization Demo