The Eagle Ford has been very good to Pioneer Natural Resources. The Dallas-based firm was working South Texas for years before the Eagle Ford emerged. Pioneer was busy drilling Edwards Trend gas wells on a nice leasehold position that later turned out to be smack in the heart of the Eagle Ford play.

“It’s been a phenomenal play for us,” said Timothy L. Dove, Pioneer’s president and chief operating officer, at Hart Energy’s recent DUG Eagle Ford Conference & Exhibition in San Antonio. “In essence, when it comes to the Eagle Ford Shale, we had zero-cost basis to enter the trend.”

Pioneer concentrates its efforts in the Eagle Ford’s condensate window, where it produces liquids-rich gas at high pressures and high volumes. Today, the operator makes 135,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from its 215,000 gross acres, about 68% liquids. It’s a stunning growth trajectory from the 4,000 boe per day it produced in 2010.

In 2012, Pioneer moved from the exploration phase of its Eagle Ford assets to field optimization. “We are in continuous development, continuous improvement mode,” Dove said. “Now we’re in the process of optimizing our well spacing and completion designs. We are making sure that we are reaching out and touching all of that rock volume that we need to stimulate for maximum production.”

Today, Pioneer is drilling 100% of its Eagle Ford wells on multi-well pads. Last year, it implemented a two-string design, which saves $750,000 to $1 million in drilling cost per well versus a three-string design. Additionally, between 2011 and the first half of 2014, it dropped its cost-per-foot from $265 to $201. During the same period, total footage per day increased from 496 feet to 730 feet.

Another area of effort is determining effective downspacing for the reservoir. “Understanding stimulated rock volume is crucial,” Dove said. “We want to get close to that point where we have constructive interference.” Among the technologies that Pioneer uses to hone its well spacing are microseismic, 3-D seismic, tracers, geochemistry and frac modeling. Initially, Pioneer located its wells 1,000 feet apart. Now it has downspaced in pilot areas to between 175 and 300 feet apart, including staggered laterals in upper targets.

On completions, Pioneer has been focused on optimizing its treatments. This ranges from pumping more barrels per minute per perf cluster to reducing the spacing between clusters. The volume of proppant pumped per foot is also increasing. Today, the typical Pioneer well features 21 stages spaced 50 feet apart, pumped at 16 barrels per minutes with 1,200 pounds of proppant per foot.

The results have been stunning: In some areas, Pioneer has realized a 20% to 30% EUR increase with minimal increase in drilling and completion costs. “These completions make sense and make money,” Dove said. “We have seen quite outstanding results so far.”