Clay Gaspar
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Devon Energy
Thank you, Rick, and good morning, everyone. Our second quarter operating results demonstrated that our business is performing at a high-level and building momentum as we head into the second-half of the year. As Rick touched on, this positive trajectory is underpinned by improving capital efficiency from faster cycle times, improving service costs and positive appraisal results that will contribute to our production profile and financial results over the balance of this year and more significantly into 2024.
Today, I plan to provide a brief overview of the second quarter results across our assets as well as highlight some upcoming catalysts. The most significant contributor to Devon's second quarter operating success was once again our franchise asset in the Delaware Basin. As you can see on Slide 8, more than 60% of our capital activity was deployed to this prolific basin, allowing us to run a consistent program of 16 rigs. With a fourth completion crew at work in the first half of the year, we were able to place 76 wells online in the second quarter, up more than 80% compared to the first quarter. This elevated completion activity grew our Delaware production to 420,000 BOE per day and is expected to underpin the volume growth in the third quarter as well.
While we had great results across our acreage position, a key project I would like to highlight from the quarter was our Mule development in Eddy County, New Mexico. We've talked in the past about the important appraisal work that we do each year with 10% to 20% of our capital budget, the Mule pad is an example to provide you some visibility into the fruits of this labor. This 11-well project successfully co-developed multiple landing zones within the Wolfcamp, with particularly exciting results from the appraisal of deeper Wolfcamp B benches. The initial results from these six wells targeting the Wolfcamp B landing zones averaged greater than 3,100 BOE per day with 44% oil cut.
Per well recoveries are on trend to exceed 2 million barrels of oil equivalent. Importantly, these highly commercial appraisal results derisk and enhance the economic expectations on approximately 100 Wolfcamp B locations in the Cotton Draw area. Furthermore, these deeper Wolfcamp locations are expected to be highly competitive within our capital allocation framework going forward.
The Delaware team also continued to make progress, advancing drilling and completions efficiencies across our operations in the Basin. In the Wolfcamp, we improved drilling productivity by about 10% on a per-foot basis over the past year, while some of our best spud release times for two mile laterals pushing below 15 days. Completion efficiencies have also steadily improved with our cycle times decreasing by 9% year-to-date and compared to 2022. Averaging a record completion pace of more than 2,200 feet per day-in the quarter, this operational progress has been accomplished in conjunction with an even higher safety and environmental focus and expectation. The great work our team has done to drive improvements across the entire planning and execution of our resources, coupled with the broader service cost deflation trends, are positioning our business to be even more efficient as we head into 2024.
Moving to the Eagle Ford. Our three-rig program resulted in 29 gross wells placed online during the quarter. This activity, which was concentrated in the recently acquired acreage in Karnes County, drove a 9% increase in productivity versus the previous quarter. This margin -- this high margin growth was driven by strong well productivity, achieved from a balanced mix of development and appraisal activity, designed to refine the next-stage of development for this prolific resource play. Our top development project in the quarter was headlined by our LP Butler pad. This four-well pad developed a highly charged seam of pay in the volatile oil window of the play that exceeded pre-drill expectations, reaching an impressive average 30-day rate of 3,600 BOE per day with a 56% of oil cut.
On the appraisal front, a key success in the quarter was the Krudwig Unit. This development project in Karnes County tested infill spacing ranging from 140 to 150 -- excuse me, 180 foot and roughly 30 wells per section. The initial 30-day rates from this package of wells averaged 2,000 BOE per day, resulting in highly commercial returns that adds to the depth and quality of our inventory in the play. Also, adding to the commerciality of this tighter spacing was our drilling performance where we broke a Company record, averaging over 2,000 feet per day, which included the fastest spud to rig release time in the Company history of only 5.7 days. As we look to allocate capital for 2024 and beyond, the positive operating results we've achieved year-to-date served as valuable data points to optimize future development activity in the Eagle Ford and other -- and further deepens our convictions of the resource upside that exists across this entire field.
Moving to the Williston. Volumes began to rebound in the second quarter, growing 4% quarter-over-quarter to 56,000 BOE per day. This growth was driven by improved weather, higher uptimes on existing producers and successful adjustments to completion and production techniques for some of the new well activity. These completion and production modifications consisted of change to a larger proppant size designed to mitigate mobility of sand and a shift in artificial lift techniques to improve well uptime. With the favorable flowback results from two pads that have deployed these techniques, we have high confidence that the wells' productivity will improve as we see progress throughout the year. Looking at inventory, we now have more than 150 wells remaining and identified significant refrac opportunities across hundreds of producing wells in the field, providing us the optionality to deploy steady reinvestment in this play for multiple years to come.
Turning to the Powder River Basin. The key objective of our 2023 program is to continue to appraise and methodically refine our understanding of the Niobrara so that we can optimize this resource for future development. With this focus, the team has made substantial progress over the last year, establishing repeatable commercial results with three mile laterals across a significant portion of our acreage in Converse County. Furthermore, since we're not observing any degradation in the results from the three-well spacing, we plan to test four wells per section later this year. And lastly, we're also encouraged by the early flow rates from appraisal activity recently brought online in the northern portion of our leasehold position that could extend the Niobrara potential into Campbell County. I'll provide more updates on these tests in the coming quarters. But it's been evident that our 300,000 acre -- net acreage position in the Powder River Basin is providing Devon important resource catalysts for the future.
Lastly, in the Anadarko Basin, production volumes grew 10% from the previous quarter, driven by the ramp-up and completion activity funded by a drilling carry from our Dow joint-venture. The operational execution from this program was superb, with well costs consistently coming in below pre-drill expectations and the initial flow rates from several wells exceeding 3,000 BOE per day. To date, we have only utilized approximately half of the 133 well carry agreement we have in-place with Dow. We anticipate the remaining carry will provide us sufficient runway to support our current pace of activity for the next 18 to 24 months and we're open to expanding this scope of partnership as we successfully demonstrated in the past. For the remainder of 2023, we plan to bring on 10 new wells weighted towards year-end.
In summary, I'm proud of the capital efficiency results that each of our asset teams are delivering during the quarter and the strong momentum that we have built heading into the second-half of '23.
And with that, I will turn the call over to Jeff for the financial review. Jeff?
