Casing
Casing is the steel pipe cemented into a wellbore that keeps the hole open, protects groundwater, and lets the well be safely produced.
Casing is the steel pipe run into a well and cemented in place to keep the borehole from collapsing, isolate different rock zones and groundwater from the wellbore, and give the well a controlled path to produce through. Wells are typically cased in stages as drilling proceeds deeper — surface casing near the top, sometimes intermediate casing, and production casing set at the target depth — with each string cemented before drilling continues.
How much casing a well needs depends heavily on the formation being drilled: in some shale plays the rock is competent enough that operators can skip intermediate casing altogether and go straight from surface casing to production casing, a design choice that directly affects both well cost and the operating expense tracked against it later.
Heard on the show
“it's almost like you've already got casing set. So we on the first uh I think two or three wells, uh we went ahead and set intermediate casing”
“you're looking at the LOE on the on the casing drawdown side with what you know with the services we provide there”