Shale drillers are going for long - not deep - wells in the oil patch

New York

LONG is the new deep. Just ask SM Energy Co, which on Tuesday spent US$1.6 billion to expand its acreage in America's most prodigious oil patch, the Permian Basin.

The unique geologic makeup of the Permian, consisting of multiple layers of oil- and gas-trapping shale that span hundreds of kilometres, is well suited for a technique that's allowing producers to pull more crude out of fewer wells. Explorers there are drilling longer and longer wells, running thousands of feet sideways to tap as much of the crude-bearing rock as possible.