Pad Drilling: Sequence the Wells So the Rig Never Waits

A single pad in the Permian can hold six, eight, or a dozen wells. One rig drills them one after another, and the money is made or lost in the gaps between wells. The rig that is waiting is burning the day rate; the rig that is turning to the right is earning it back.

What sequencing actually is

Sequencing is deciding the order of the wells before the rig arrives. It sounds like a spreadsheet exercise, and it is one, but the decisions are physical: which wells share a pad, which laterals are longest, which wells the completion crews will want first, and where the water and sand staging will sit while the rig still owns the pad.

The worst sequence is the one that looks obvious: drill the wells in the order the permits arrived. The best sequence usually batches the surface holes first, then comes back for the curves and laterals. Fewer trips, fewer rig moves, and the completion crews can start on the first wells while the rig is still drilling the last ones.

Batch operations

Batching means doing the same operation on several wells in one pass. Drill all the surface holes, run all the surface casing, then move to the production hole. The rig spends less time changing gear and more time drilling, and the crews build rhythm on a repeated operation instead of relearning a new one. The pad drilling guide on this site covers how the pad layout makes or breaks the batch.

The trade is real: a batched program can hold a well waiting on the next hole, and a pad full of open surface holes is a scheduling risk. That is why the sequence belongs on paper, with the rig's moves and the completion handoffs timed, before the first spud.

Simultaneous operations

The frontier of pad economics is running the completion crew on one well while the rig drills the next. Done well, it is where the pad's throughput doubles. Done badly, the two crews fight over the same pad, the same trucks, and the same road, and the frac support article on this site shows how fast that coordination gets expensive.

Simultaneous operations are a scheduling problem with a safety edge: the rig's exclusion zone, the frac spread's equipment, the water trucks' routes, and the crane's swing all have to coexist. The operator who coordinates it on paper, with a shared schedule, wins. The operator who coordinates it by phone, in the moment, pays.

Where the schedule leaks

Most pad delays are not drilling delays. They are waits: waiting on location prep, waiting on the well program, waiting on a service crew that was booked twice, waiting on paperwork. The NPT guide and the downtime calculator put a number on what those waits cost per hour. The rig move article covers the biggest single gap, the move between wells.

The fix is a shared schedule that everyone on the pad works from: the rig contractor, the completion crew, the trucking dispatcher, the location crew. One schedule, updated daily, with the next handoff visible. That is an operations job, and it runs on records.

The handoff is where the sequence ends

Pad economics finish at the handoff: the last well drilled, the rig moved, the completion crew taking over the pad. The handoff is a checklist, not a moment. The mud and casing left behind, the open wells that stay in the drilled-but-uncompleted inventory, the records the completion crew needs, the roads and the pad condition. EIA tracks the DUC inventory for exactly this reason: the pad's value is realized at the handoff, not at the spud.

The operators who run the handoff well have a schedule that shows the next crew's start date and what they need when they arrive. The ones who run it badly have a rig waiting to move and a completion crew waiting on a decision. The same pad, the same wells, a different gap. The gap is where the day rate goes.

If the pad sequence lives in the drilling superintendent's head, book a working session with the OpsFlo operations team. Book a call here to coordinate pad sequencing, batches, and simultaneous operations from one schedule.