Bill Barrett Corp. (NYSE: BBG) reported well results on its first nine extended reach lateral wells drilled in the northeast Wattenberg area of the Denver-Julesburg (D-J) Basin, the company said in a Feb. 3 release.

The Denver company said it has drilled and completed 28 extended reach and mid-length lateral wells in the Northeast Wattenberg to date.

The first nine extended reach lateral wells, or XRL wells, to reach 30 days of sales had 30-day initial production (IP) rates that averaged about 617 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) per well. The IP rates are based on three commodity streams including oil, natural gas and NGL.

Results include six wells in the northern block and three wells in the southern block, with similar rates from both areas.

All of the wells in the northern section were drilled into the Niobrara B formation and the wells in the southern section included wells in both the Niobrara B and C formations.

The nine wells were drilled to an average lateral length of 9,140 feet, of which six were completed with a hybrid sliding sleeve and plug-and-perf technology and three wells with all plug-and-perf technology. All of the wells were completed with 40 fracture stimulation stages, an average 8.4 million pounds of sand and placed on gas lift.

Scot Woodall, CEO and president, commented, "We are very pleased to provide these initial results from our D-J northeast Wattenberg program. These results fully meet our expectations. While too early to draw conclusions on expected ultimate recovery [EUR] volumes, these 30-day rates are consistent with 30-day rates modeled from peer offset activity."

The strong initial success in the northeast Wattenberg XRL program sets the foundation for the company's 2015 operations program, he said.

"The 2015 drilling program will concentrate on drilling XRL wells in this area, which offers the best return in our portfolio," he said. "However, we expect the 2015 program to be scaled back from the 2014 capital program."

He said the company will provide details of its 2015 plan and year-end 2014 reserves in conjunction with its 2014 financial reporting in late February.

The company said it controlled the flowback rate on the wells to optimize recoveries, which the it expects will enhance EURs and payback.

Further, in more recently drilled wells, the company has tested plug-and-perf technology, up to 12 million pounds of sand and up to 55 fracture stimulation stages. These variations are intended to evaluate how to optimize technology and further improve EURs. Current well costs, inclusive of the larger fracture stimulation stages are currently $7.5 million per well, representing a 10% reduction from 2014.

The company expects cost to decline significantly throughout the year as it drives cost optimizations through its operations and as drilling and service costs continue to decline with lower oil prices.

Average well results exclude one early well that has performed below expectations as a result of encountering several fault structures.

As previously announced, the company has experienced disruptions in natural gas gathering and processing in the northeast Wattenberg as a result of third party facilities downtime. The impact was estimated at about 1,000 boe/d of production in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Preliminarily, total production for the fourth quarter of 2014 was 1.4 MMboe, within guidance despite the third party disruptions. Third party disruptions are estimated to impact production in January by about 650 boe/d.