Was Chevron Smart or Just Lucky in the Permian Basin?

In the control room of Chevron Corp.’s Scharbauer SE71 oil well, midway up a 150-foot rig in the heart of the Permian Basin, Operations Manager Scott Nash gives instructions to a contractor guiding a robotic arm screwing lengths of steel drilling pipe together.

The procedure may save less than a minute per connection compared with the traditional way Chevron used to join pipe. And as recently as five years ago, the company wouldn’t have considered such a high-tech solution, especially in this arid West Texas landscape, long considered a poor candidate for profitable exploration. But today the Permian is so ...