Comprehensive Drilling Plan

Our Mustang Comprehensive Drilling Plan (CDP) is a blueprint for energy development that is advancing the way we fuel Colorado lifestyles by supporting our goal to minimize our footprint in and around communities.. It involves:

• 64,000 acres of farmland southeast of Greeley, Colorado in Weld County, encompassing rural lands with no municipalities within the boundaries
• More than 400 approved horizontal drilling permits
• Plugging and removing more than 1,400 older vertical wells and their production facilities, then reclaiming the land

For more on all the ways we protect, respect and work together with our communities, see our Noble Neighbor Program.

Innovation is at the root of our oil and natural gas operations. Through the use of advancing technology in our Mustang CDP, we are streamlining development to increase efficiency, enhance safety and significantly reduce our footprint.  The full spectrum of the CDP’s environmental benefits include reductions in emissions, water use, traffic and more.

We always strive to be better, and we continue modernizing our field operations in Weld County to reduce air emissions. In the Mustang CDP, we are significantly reducing emissions by:

• Using electricity to power the drilling rig and engines, we eliminate emissions from engine exhaust
• Transporting oil and gas by pipeline instead of trucks, we eliminate truck traffic and emissions
• Keeping oil and gas in pipelines, we eliminate emissions from storage tanks at all phases of development
• Using compressed air instead of natural gas to open and close valves, we prevent the release of methane
• Using one fully electric drilling rig and working with contractors to develop a fully electric frack spread
• Removing more than 1,400 older vertical wells and associated storage facilities, we are eliminating significant existing emissions

The Mustang CDP provides a blueprint for modernizing operations and minimizing the footprint of development in this area. This includes tankless production facilities called econodes.

Our newest econodes utilize technology that will deliver greenhouse gas emission reductions in excess of 90% from older facility designs.  These improvements include:

• Electrification of engines
• Using compressed air instead of natural gas in pneumatic controllers
• Elimination of tanks from the production location
• Elimination of truck loading

Through the use of advancing technology in our Mustang CDP, we are streamlining development to significantly reduce our footprint. In fact, it now takes only about 7.5 surface acres to deliver the same volume that previously required 400 surface acres – a reduction of more than 95 percent.

The combination of removing 1,400 vertical legacy wells and nearly 500 tank batteries in Mustang will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80,000 metric tons of CO2e/year once fully completed. Learn more about our Plug and Removal Program.

Once the older wells are plugged and removed, we will reclaim lands and access roads so surface owners can use the area for agricultural and other purposes. See the map of reclamation areas for full details.

The CDP will provide the opportunity to capitalize on recycling of flowback and produced water to the fullest extent practicable — reducing the amount of freshwater needed for well construction and completions (the process of preparing a well for production).

Traditional drilling permits are for two-year periods. Permits within the CDP are for six-year periods. This provides us with the flexibility to develop long-term plans that enable us to work our schedule around seasonal crops and wildlife migration.

As the single designated operator of the Mustang CDP, Noble Energy can transport all fluids (oil, natural gas and produced water) by pipeline infrastructure. By doing so, we will eliminate more than 152 million miles of truck traffic and 6.8 million truck trips, not to mention reduce immense amounts of greenhouse gas emissions including:

• 768,000 tons of carbon dioxide
• 2,000 tons of carbon monoxide
• 2,000 tons of oxides of nitrogen

As part of our traffic and safety plan already in place, all designated transportation routes associated with the CDP utilize existing paved roads, such as WCR 49, that have been constructed to accommodate commercial traffic. See the map of access roads for full details.

Over the life of the project, we estimate this will:

The Mustang CDP is part of our Noble Neighbor Program — the initiatives that help ensure we are doing everything we can to protect, respect and work together with the communities we call home.

With a strong focus on community, safety, technology and innovation, programs within Noble Neighbor also include:

• Integrated Development Plan (IDP)
• Plug and Removal Program
• Community Investment
• Noble Operations and Safety Training Center (NOSTC)
• Noble Operations Control Center (NOCC)
• Alternative Truck Loading Anson System (ATLAS)
• Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR)