News – whitson Launches Industry Leading Well Spacing Depletion Consortium
whitson Launches Industry-Leading Well Spacing & Depletion Consortium
23 October 2025
October 2025 — Whitson is proud to announce the launch of our Well Spacing & Depletion Consortium, a two-year collaborative initiative focused on redefining how the industry quantifies well spacing and understands depletion impact in unconventional reservoirs.
Built in partnership with leading E&P operators across North America, the program applies rigorous data science, engineering modeling, and real-world field insight to establish basin-specific, physics-rooted frameworks for optimal spacing and depletion strategies.
“Spacing and depletion decisions represent some of the largest remaining value drivers in unconventionals,” said whitson’s Braden Bowie. “This consortium brings operators together to solve these challenges with shared learnings, strong confidentiality protections, and basin-specific best practices.”
Technical Objectives
Participants will work collaboratively to advance four core technical areas:
✅ Quantifying Well Spacing: Identify various methods to quantify well spacing in both a 2D and 3D setting. Comparison against a baseline to evaluate which metrics capture spacing better than others. Deliverable is a variety of spacing metrics for operators to use, with recommendations.
✅ Quantifying Depletion Impact: Quantify child well degradation and compare against a baseline to evaluate which metrics capture depletion better than others. Deliverables include a variety of depletion metrics and recommendations, as well as insight on factors such as parent well frac hits or initial pressure degradation
✅ Impact of Stacking Wells: Evaluate if stacking wells vertically causes any performance degradation, either when co-developed or as a parent-child configuration. Will also consider observed interactions compared to reservoir modelling and fracturing monitoring.
✅ Impact on Parent Wells: Attempt to quantify longer term parent well performance impact given metrics such as child well frac size or distance between wells, and learnings from modelling. Using this, we'll attempt to quantify longer term (EUR) impacts on the parent wells.
Beyond the core objectives outlined above, the consortium also serves as a technical forum for discussion, collaboration, and knowledge exchange on unconventional well performance analysis. This is supported by a series of knowledge-sharing sessions and courses, where participating companies openly discuss challenges, share insights, and learn from each other’s experiences.
Basins Available
Confidentiality
Company data will remain confidential and not be shared across participants. Only general conclusions and shared learnings will be distributed with all participating companies. No study data will be published without written consent from all consortium participants.
Leadership & Contact
The program is led by whitson’s Braden Bowie, with support from our multi-disciplinary subsurface research and software teams.
For questions or to secure participation: 📩 braden@whitson.com
Download PDF
Built in partnership with leading E&P operators across North America, the program applies rigorous data science, engineering modeling, and real-world field insight to establish basin-specific, physics-rooted frameworks for optimal spacing and depletion strategies.
“Spacing and depletion decisions represent some of the largest remaining value drivers in unconventionals,” said whitson’s Braden Bowie. “This consortium brings operators together to solve these challenges with shared learnings, strong confidentiality protections, and basin-specific best practices.”
Technical Objectives
Participants will work collaboratively to advance four core technical areas:
✅ Quantifying Well Spacing: Identify various methods to quantify well spacing in both a 2D and 3D setting. Comparison against a baseline to evaluate which metrics capture spacing better than others. Deliverable is a variety of spacing metrics for operators to use, with recommendations.
✅ Quantifying Depletion Impact: Quantify child well degradation and compare against a baseline to evaluate which metrics capture depletion better than others. Deliverables include a variety of depletion metrics and recommendations, as well as insight on factors such as parent well frac hits or initial pressure degradation
✅ Impact of Stacking Wells: Evaluate if stacking wells vertically causes any performance degradation, either when co-developed or as a parent-child configuration. Will also consider observed interactions compared to reservoir modelling and fracturing monitoring.
✅ Impact on Parent Wells: Attempt to quantify longer term parent well performance impact given metrics such as child well frac size or distance between wells, and learnings from modelling. Using this, we'll attempt to quantify longer term (EUR) impacts on the parent wells.
Beyond the core objectives outlined above, the consortium also serves as a technical forum for discussion, collaboration, and knowledge exchange on unconventional well performance analysis. This is supported by a series of knowledge-sharing sessions and courses, where participating companies openly discuss challenges, share insights, and learn from each other’s experiences.
Basins Available
- Midland
- Delaware
- Eagleford
- Uinta
- Bakken
- Haynesville
- Marcellus
- Utica
- Duvernay
- Montney
- Anadarko
- DJ
- Powder River
- Vaca Muerta
- Scoop Stack
Confidentiality
Company data will remain confidential and not be shared across participants. Only general conclusions and shared learnings will be distributed with all participating companies. No study data will be published without written consent from all consortium participants.
Leadership & Contact
The program is led by whitson’s Braden Bowie, with support from our multi-disciplinary subsurface research and software teams.
For questions or to secure participation: 📩 braden@whitson.com
Download PDF