Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Thomas Gardner – Simmons & Co.
Thomas Gardner – Simmons & Co.
I have a few questions related to the Marcellus specifically on those 24 wells that went into your tight curve. How many of those were below your 4.4 bcf well average and if you remove the problem wells, what impact would that have on your average EUR?
Jeffrey Ventura
Out of our whole data set, the only wells we really removed from that were the first three wells which were our first three attempts and our fourth well was our great success back in August of 2007, and give the team again great credit for figuring out the plays so quickly, particularly when you compare that against the Barnett or any of the other shell plays.
The results are reasonably consistent across there. Granted there is some spread but there's a lot of consistency as well. But I couldn't be more excited. I thought three or four B's was great and I'd still be thrilled with that, but the fact that these wells are 4.4 B's and get economics that are that strong, I couldn't be happier with.
Thomas Gardner – Simmons & Co.
I really do appreciate your shale play comparison. I just wanted to ask you to kind of fill out the terminal decline rates and perhaps the life of each of those. I'm sure I could back into them but I just wanted to know what you were assuming.
Jeffrey Ventura
The decline rates we used for each of them was 6% and life of 40 years. And again, the key is ultimately on all these plays, what kind of rate of return does that generate? The shape of the curve, the gas price you get, the royalty, the cap you pay and then of course rate of return takes into account the discounting of that and again, I think for any large scale repeatable play in the U.S., that's about as good as it gets that I'm aware of.
And we tried to be very fair with all the plays. Like John said, we just use the public data Rodney mentioned on the other three plays, but we tried to bias the other plays to the high side by taking the core, best operators and compared it against that.
Thomas Gardner – Simmons & Co.
And your thoughts on development plans for your northeast portion of the Marcellus and your thoughts on the quality of that acreage relative to what you're developing now.
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