The difference is when they set up and frack they are almost assured of getting more oil at a fraction of the cost of drilling a new well!!!
It costs me as much to frac a well as it does to drill a well, if I’m drilling a horizontal my frac cost can run as much 10 time higher than my drilling cost depending on the number of stages.
We're drilling the laterals (and the curves and the vertical wells) a lot faster now. Especially since things are getting well enough developed up here that we have a pretty good idea where what is, and we're not feeling our way along watching the gamma ray for navigation quite as much. Before, we were mapping structure with a drill bit.
From when I started doing horizontal wells (1990) we've cut the time to drill one by two thirds, and it is getting faster.
A frac has more or less fixed costs that may come down, but won't go away like they do taking a couple weeks fewer to drill the well.
With the rig count dropping, though, we're entering the heavy competition phase where all the gee whiz stuff gets developed and run (often at reduced costs for the first couple of times just to get it on bottom). It will only get more intense as long as there are rigs drilling.