SAN ANTONIO — Three years and $12 billion ago, BHP Billiton Ltd. (NYSE: BHP) bought its way into the Eagle Ford, the Permian Basin and the Haynesville.

Since buying Petrohawk in 2011, the Melbourne, Australia, company has also grown organically.

BHP is now aiming for flawlessness as it evaluates every aspect of its Eagle Ford operations, particularly safety.

On the surface, they look in fine form. BHP’s Black Hawk position is 57,000 net acres in the condensate window with production that in the past several weeks topped 100,000 barrels of oil per day (boe/d). The increase of 22% was up from the company’s previously announced production of 82,000 boe/d. The Black Hawk, in Karnes and De Witt counties, Texas, produced up to 80% liquids.

The company also operates the Hawkville position, which consists of 250,000 net acres in La Salle and McMullen counties. Production is about 70,000 boe/d, 50% of which is liquids.

“The Black Hawk is really our big focus area at the moment,” David Banks, general manager, Eagle Ford assets, for BHP Billiton, said at Hart Energy’s recent DUG Eagle Ford conference.

Of its 17 Eagle Ford rigs, the company has 14 in the Black Hawk.

“That’s really driven by the very high liquids yield from our reservoir in Black Hawk, Banks said.

The company is, nonetheless, set on improvement. But even for a global leader among resources companies, Banks said BHP faces challenges.

Goals such as safety, well efficiency and increased production are checked by a workplace in the wilderness.

“Every day in our Eagle Ford operation we have thousands of people,” Banks said. “They come from a very diverse range of backgrounds.”

As with much of the industry, in the past several years many workers don’t have oilfield experience, meaning veterans work alongside and depend on them.

“Beyond that, particularly as it applies to Eagle Ford, we have a real diversity of language skills,” he said. “Many of our front-line workers do not have English as a first language. And that presents real problem in communications.”

BHP manages a vast area. Its interests in the Eagle Ford span six counties, from east to west about 250 miles. Of its U.S. onshore spending in fiscal year 2014, 75% went toward drilling and development expenditures in the Eagle Ford.

In every aspect of the business, from drilling to frac spreads, the number of work areas the company has on a daily basis is 60 to 70 or more. That doesn’t include the company’s lease operators covering the hundred of wells it operates daily.

Banks said shale development is ideally suited for improvement.

“The nice thing about shale is the fact that it lends itself to some structured, continuous improvement,” he said. “Many of our activities are quite repetitious and therefore render themselves to standardization and improvement through the learning cycle.”

The company’s goals include:

  • Reducing drilling costs per well through efficiency and supply chain management.
  • Increasing ultimate recovery through completions optimization.
  • Reducing spud to sales cycle time to move cash flow faster.

“We believe we can deliver potentially up to 20% net present value by focusing on well costs,” he said.

Quarter to quarter, for instance, Banks said BHP recently drilled from well spud to total depth in faster than seven days.

“We hope to get a whole lot more of that and even faster,” he said.

Banks also emphasized safety is a core value for BHP and that its safety record in the Eagle Ford works out to about 2.5 injuries for every 1 million hours worked. As with all things Eagle Ford, the company wants improvement.

“The size of the challenge is enormous, but we as a company and as an industry want to make this the forefront of our thinking and our efforts to drive toward that injury-free outcome that we want to see,” Banks said.