Development
Citation seeks to grow the value of its producing property base through the origination and implementation of a targeted range of primary, secondary and tertiary recovery projects. While many of our fields have been producing for 50 years or more, our properties are typically located in prolific oil and gas producing basins that offer excellent opportunity for organic growth in proved reserves and production volumes.
Similar to our acquisition strategy, we apply rigorous, engineering-driven risk-return analysis to our development program. As a result, Citation's finding and development costs have been consistently well below industry averages. The company uses a portfolio-based approach to its development program that is designed to balance risk with growth opportunity.
Our capital projects are generally segmented into five categories:
Workovers, reactivations and stimulations
With over 11,500 active wells, Citation is continually presented with low-risk opportunities to enhance production of its producing fields by re-working existing wellbores. These projects encompass the full-range of project types, including acid treatments, fracture stimulations, adding wellbore perforations and reactivating temporarily abandoned wells. Long a hallmark of our capabilities to enhance the value of our properties, workover, reactivation and well stimulation projects continue to form the foundation of Citation's ongoing capital program.
Infill drilling and waterflood expansion
Advances in drilling and completion technologies, along with improved commodity prices, have contributed to an increase in Citation's infill drilling activity and waterflood expansion opportunities. Infill drilling projects include both vertical and horizontal wells in and around Citation's existing areas of production. These projects aim to increase production volumes and recoverable reserves through down spacing or pattern optimization and are the most common type of project in our typical development program.
Unconventional resource plays
Citation currently controls significant acreage in several unconventional resource plays. In addition to coal-bed methane development in the Rocky Mountain region, Citation is active in the Bakken Shale play in the Williston Basin in North Dakota, has acquired 3-D seismic data over its Barnett Shale acreage in North Texas, and has identified a potential emerging gas resource opportunity in its Permian Basin holdings. Consistent with our development strategy, we do not seek to be the technology innovator in these unconventional plays, but rather wait for the recovery techniques to become proven and refined by other operators and then apply them as appropriate to our controlled acreage positions.
Primary reserves development
With a very deep, diverse set of properties across our four geographic regions, Citation is actively seeking to identify opportunities to extend known field limits or expand productive horizons through drilling for primary reserves that remain unidentified by prior operators. In contrast to our more traditional infill drilling investments, these projects are characterized by greater geologic risk and reservoir complexity, but offer higher production and reserve potential.
Enhanced oil recovery
With our historical acquisition strategy focused on mature oil properties, Citation has amassed a property base that is ripe with potential to access additional reserves through the application of a variety of tertiary recovery techniques. Preliminary analysis of the Citation asset base has identified over 40 fields with tertiary recovery opportunities through CO2 injection. Our EOR team is currently focused on implementation of several types of tertiary recovery projects, including, active injection of polymers to improve waterflood performance in high water cut reservoirs, a steam flood in one of our Rocky Mountain fields, and a surfactant polymer flood in our Central region.