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With steerable horizontal drilling and fracking ONE well can replace dozens of vertically drilled wells

While that statement is likely true in being capable of stretching far enough to cover that distance, I believe the typical horizontal well is normally only going to reach 1/2 mile to 1.5 miles, maybe 2 miles. The economics get much more expensive trying to reach significantly farther with few and much more expensive rigs available to reach multiple miles horizontally underground.

I believe the typical economics are not so much of replacing many vertical wells with a single horizontal. The main reason they are used in the shale plays is the vertical wells can rarely produce enough, long enough in time to be economic.

So instead of replacing a dozen vertical wells, they allow production in a field that would not be economic without horizontal steerable drilling.

I'm pinging Smokin' Joe to see if he agrees. He knows this side of the business more than I. Most of my work comes after the drilling is in place and the production facilities are being built.

"While that statement is likely true in being capable of stretching far enough to cover that distance, I believe the typical horizontal well is normally only going to reach 1/2 mile to 1.5 miles, maybe 2 miles."

I was thinking more in terms of being able to go north/south/east/west from a single insertion point. Two miles in all those directions is covering a LOT more volume than two miles straight down. I suspect, as usual, that there are a spectrum of possibilities, some already exploited and some not yet so.

You need to take a peek at the report posted by SC_Pete. The economic numbers are staggering. Texas will be adding 100 BILLION dollars a year to its economy by 2035 due to "unconventional" oil and gas (if I'm reading that table right).

We routinely drill just under two miles in a lateral (usually about 9500 ft.--10000 ft. or so from the surface location. IIRC, the record is far greater than that, in the North Sea, but the most we've done was about 12,000 ft. over in the edge of the Elm Coulee Field in Monatana. Those limits are more legal constraints determined by lease spacing than physical limitations.

We can drill four or more wells from a single location pad, and cover 8 square miles of formation with those wells, so it isn't out of line to say that 16 (320 acre spacing) to 32 (160 acre spacing) vertical wells would be replaced by the 4 laterals--between 4 and 8 wells per lateral.

So instead of replacing a dozen vertical wells, they allow production in a field that would not be economic without horizontal steerable drilling.

As a rule, in unconventional gas/oil plays, this is the case. The vertical wells which are 'replaced' would not, individually, have reached payout as a general rule. The ability to frac two miles of pay (+/-) versus ten feet (or less) per well is what makes it work.