Bert Hood, Colorado-Oil prices continue to fall. But this did not stop the staff from recently drilling a well in what was once a cornfield, using a diamond bit to carefully guide the last part of the 13,000-foot pipe into the hard Niobara shale.

Their oil well is one of hundreds of wells drilled by Anadarko Petroleum in the Wattenberg oil field in eastern Colorado this year, and one day, as many as 800 barrels of crude oil may be gushing out a day. But Anadarko does not plan to produce a drop of crude oil from an oil well for at least a year, because oil prices are now pitifully low.

The oil well here is only one of more than 4,000 oil and gas wells across the country. These wells do not produce any output, but can be exploited quickly.

Many constitute a new form of underground storage, a new well inventory strategy used in a struggling industry that has been forced to lay off tens of thousands of workers, decommission most of the drilling rigs and write down assets.

For individual companies like Anadarko, deferred completions-known in the oil industry as DUCs (acronym for drilling but unfinished)-are bets that the price of oil is about 38 per barrel higher than the current price. The dollar level is about 60% lower than the current level. Summer of 2014. Oil executives see it as a way to hoard cash when the cost of services plummets, and as a flexible lever to quickly increase production when oil prices rise again.

"We are adapting to market conditions," said Mo Ferman, Anadarko Rocky Mountain Drilling Operations Manager, as he watched workers pump drilling fluid and spiral pipes within the snow-capped Rocky Mountains. "We are focused on what we can do to prepare for the acceleration when the market returns."

But incomplete oil wells are another reason why many analysts say the recovery of oil prices is indefinite. The backlog of oil wells can produce up to 500,000 barrels of oil a day, which is roughly the same as the amount of oil that Iran is expected to increase to the oversupply global market after complying with the recent nuclear agreement at the end of next year.

Some analysts said that oil companies such as Anadarko, EOG Resources and Continental Resources may collectively risk suffocating their expected price recovery. Once prices rise, a large amount of new supply will be released. Others say that the final impact will be small and short-lived, but since the industry has never used this strategy before, no one can be sure.

Christopher Kopczynski, senior oil analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said: “If oil prices in the United States start to climb, mass production may be put into production quickly, which may put pressure on the balance of supply and demand in the market.” A consulting firm.

The shale revolutions in Texas, North Dakota, and Colorado made this new strategy possible. These revolutions nearly doubled national oil production in the six years before oil prices plummeted and production began to fall.

Before a shale well can be produced, it must first be drilled and then completed by hydraulic fracturing, which is called hydraulic fracturing, the process of blasting shale rock with water, sand and chemicals to release oil or natural gas. As the drilling platform drills multiple shale wells from one production platform, the operator’s drilling efficiency has doubled. Executives said that because shale wells have the largest flow in the first year or two of production, waiting for higher prices can maximize profits.

The global oil price per barrel is still close to the lowest point since the worst recession in 2009.

"It's a dry powder," said Raoul LeBlanc, a petroleum expert at the consulting company IHS. "This is a kind of spare capacity."

Today, there are 1,300 horizontal wells—usually the most productive wells drilled in shale fields, and they will provide the largest production in the first year—drilled at least six months ago, but the main shale in the United States The oil field is still unfinished. According to data from Rystad Energy, a Norwegian consulting firm that tracks the world's oil fields, this is more than three times the average last year.

After the oil price plummeted at the end of 2014 and the beginning of this year, Anadarko, EOG Resources and several other major producers began to intentionally store oil wells and effectively store oil underground, with a view to a rapid rebound.

"The reason we delayed the completion is to really increase the rate of return," EOG Chairman and CEO Bill Thomas admitted on the investment conference call. "We want to make sure we allow prices to firm."

Prices have not rebounded, but the economics of drilling and completion have changed. As oil prices fell and drilling crews were fired, drilling costs fell by 30%. At the same time, companies that canceled drilling rig contracts were forced to pay high severance payments.

In terms of well completions, fracturing personnel are easier to obtain and their contracts are more fluid. Executives said that these completion costs have now also fallen-which means that uncompleted wells will eventually be put into production at a lower cost.

Even if oil prices have not risen sharply, some companies have stated that they will complete most of the warehouse wells in 2016 because the drilling costs have been paid, and completing old wells is at least 40% cheaper than drilling new wells. This should enable them to keep production flat or increase while cutting capital expenditures further.

However, Anadarko remains cautious about 2016.

"If commodity prices change, we can increase it," Darrell E. Hollek, Anadarko's executive vice president of onshore exploration and production, said in an interview. "We may find that we have completed many of these deliberately drilled and unfinished wells, but we may find that we only want to complete half of them. But from a capital point of view, it is indeed our leverage."

Anadarko lost $2.2 billion last quarter, and the company's stock price has halved. Its executives formulated a strategy to slow down investment in new production of onshore shale oil wells in order to use more cash for the development of high-risk projects in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and abroad. When most experts believe that oil prices will be higher, the strategy should increase its revenue within a few years.

Anadarko already has 6,800 oil and gas production wells in the Wattenberg field and has identified 4,000 additional drilling locations. It has drilled 380 wells here this year, an increase of 11 from 2014. Fewer drilling platforms can drill wells that are designed to be more efficient. However, although all oil wells in 2014 have been completed, it plans to postpone the completion of 130 new oil wells this year for one year or more.

The company has adopted a similar strategy in its Texas oil field, making it the oil company with the largest number of uncompleted wells after EOG Resources. Wall Street analysts generally agree with this strategy.

"Compared to others, Anadarko is effectively managing the entire cycle," Morningstar analyst Mark Hansen said. "These guys are looking far away."