Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Michael Blum - Wells Fargo.
Michael Blum - Wells Fargo
John, just on the topic you were just talking about, can you I guess just go a little further? I'm just trying to understand how you're able to spend less but yet maintain production. And then I guess the larger question related to that is do that make you re-think what you should be setting aside for maintenance?
John Walker
Well, I know that there are some folks in the LNP business that are setting aside less and in some instances way less than 10% of their EBITDA as maintenance capital. We've always felt like that our maintenance capital is not what's happening today, but it's based upon our ability to maintain our production and reserves over the long term. And so that's the reason that we have continued to be probably roughly over time in the 24% to 33% of EBITDA range.
Now, clearly in a market where we can acquire things at a $1 to $1.40 in the ground, for us to be setting aside $2 doesn't make very much sense. But I think that something in the $1.40 or $1.50 range probably does make some sense right now, and we're spending less than that.
But I don't think that over time we can continue to go in and refrac wells and do this and maintain production forever and ever. I think we're eventually going to have to drill some wells. But again, we're very conscious about rates of return.
In the Chalk we have 1,700 well bores that we operate, and that creates a lot of opportunities to go in and do things to increase production. These wells up in Michigan where we've gone in and spent $50,000 per well but we've increased production from 25 Mcf to over 100 Mcf, those are great rates of return even with today's prices.
What would you say, Mark?
Mark Houser
Yes, just one comment on that, too, Michael. EnerVest in total operates over 13,000 wells now, and that'll go to 16,000 here pretty soon. With that kind of economy, that kind of size, we start seeing things that we can repeat more.
And we're starting to learn more and more about being able to do that, as John mentioned, as an example the 1,700 well bores we have in the Chalk or the many wells we have in Monroe. If you find something that's working like, as an example, the refracs on the Antrim up in Michigan, you can typically repeat that a good bit because you have such a big set of opportunities. And so one thing we're seeing right now is, as we slowed our drilling activity down a bit, we've been able to focus on that, and we're just seeing some good opportunities. And that can help us for a good little while going forward.
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