This article, and your summary, seem to be different than this article:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3080788/posts
I live in this area, and they are drilling like crazy.
But, without official numbers, the setups are taking much longer than 22 days. But when they finish, they are quite the setup.
Finally, I knew they were after natural gas.
“Finally, I knew they were after natural gas.”
Almost. Not quite. Natgas is priced too low to pay the bills if the holes gets pricey, and multi fracked holes are pricey.
Holes only get drilled if there is NGL potential. The liquids pay the bills and the gas is a side effect.
Obviously it would be better if it was oil. Not much of it, though. The flow rates are 500ish bpd and (in the Bakken shale) that number collapses about 67% in year 1 and 50ish% in subsequent years. So year 2 will flow 250, then 125, then 62 and 31 and you shut it in eventually in a few years.
These are not like Alaska wells that would erode 4-5% / year. These are huge decline rate wells. You have to drill and frack frantically to overwhelm the declines, and when you finally can’t the flow collapses sharply from lack of new drilling — which can happen hyper fast if oil’s price ever falls much.
The really bad news in this is that indeed a price fall would stop drilling, and knowing that, the impetus is already underway to find ways to automate the drilling/fracking process and fire people.