This paper discusses ExxonMobil's approach to designing and drilling world-class development wells. In today's business environment, proper well design and flawless execution are essential as our investments increasingly rely on fewer, more complex, very large volume wells. To achieve success, ExxonMobil has always treated drilling as a core business. This means we value this area of expertise and hire, train, and retain this job skill to contribute to the success of what we do to provide value for our shareholders. We focus on a disciplined approach to drilling and completion investments, full leveraging of our global knowledge, development and deployment of people, technical solutions that balance minimum cost/appropriate risk and full-life-cycle capability, and flawless execution. Introduction ExxonMobil invests approximately 4 billion dollars annually drilling and completing wells. Excellence in drilling and completion performance is key to the success of these Upstream investments. For this reason, ExxonMobil has always treated drilling as a core business within the corporation and invests the resources necessary to create distinguishing competitive capability in its drilling and completion efforts. All businesses within ExxonMobil have a set of key attributes; Drilling is no exception. These attributes lead directly to the business model which is based on:a disciplined approach to investment,a global focus,development and deployment of the right people,learning and implementation effectiveness,application, extension and invention of the right technology, anda focus on flawless execution of the right plan. A disciplined approach to drilling and completion investments requires careful assessment of the long-term economics of the projects we pursue. This has led to a series of well and project planning processes that drive integrated assessment of investments by the geoscience and engineering disciplines. These processes create structure around the development of minimum-cost/full-life-cycle well plans. This approach also drives early and effective management review to ensure the appropriate balance of cost optimization, wellbore functionality, and subsurface knowledge is achieved. Full leveraging of our global operations leads to effective development and deployment of people, as well as fast and effective learning and knowledge sharing. An integrated global approach to deployment of technical and operational resources ensures that the right people are working on the right challenges. It also provides the capacity to stretch and develop people to their potential in a controlled and deliberate setting. The global approach also facilitates knowledge. Centralized technical and operations support and management ensure disappointments are understood and avoided, and successful approaches and breakthroughs are communicated and implemented. Technology is key to sustaining our distinguishing competitive advantage in drilling and completion. Well planning processes drive an understanding of the technical challenges and solutions that are needed to balance minimum cost/appropriate risk and full-life-cycle capability. Technical solutions fall into three main categories:applying existing and emerging technology,extending existing technical capabilities, andif necessary, inventing new technology. In applying technology, our approach drives application of the right solution for the problem at hand. We do not apply technology that does not have the appropriate value versus risk and reliability. We do not apply technology because it is popular. We apply technology when it is the right answer leading to the most cost-effective solution for the life-cycle of the well.

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Major reserves of natural gas remain to be discovered in the Greater Green River Basin of southwestern Wyoming and northwestern Colorado. This basin, occupying approximately 21,000 square miles, includes four sub-basins. These are the Green River Basin proper, west of the Rock Springs Uplift, and the Red Desert, Washakie, and Sand Wash Basins, on the east side of the uplift. Thick sections of Tertiary and Upper Cretaceous rocks exist throughout most parts of the Greater Green River Basin. Drilling depths to penetrate these sections range from relatively shallow depths on the flanks of the individual basins to depths greater than 20,000 ft in certain areas of the Green River Basin proper. The Mesaverde Group, Lewis, Lance and Lower Tertiary Fort Union and Wasatch Formations have significant thick intervals of tight and near tight sandstones containing natural gas. Most of the new discoveries will probably come from stratigraphic traps. Although many of these reservoirs are currently non-commercial, there is a tremendous future potential with improvements in drilling and completion practices. With increased gas prices, new interests in deep drilling have been created. Five generalized lithofacies maps of the environments of the Upper Cretaceous section of the Greater Green River Basin of Wyoming were constructed to provide information on the productive areas of the stratigraphic section. These maps also indicate the extent of these intervals in the basin, those areas in the basin with the thickest section and some key strand plain trends. This report and the lithofacies maps should provide a good overview of the geology of the Upper Cretaceous and Lower Tertiary stratigraphic section in the Greater Green River Basin of Wyoming and help determine where the most future potential exists for natural gas.

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