Jeff Leitzell
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at EOG Resources
Thanks, Ann. I'd like to first thank our employees for their outstanding execution this quarter. Your dedication to and focus on operational excellence extends our momentum from the first quarter and puts EOG in great position to finish the year strong and deliver exceptional value to our shareholders.
In the second quarter, we beat targets across the board, including production volumes, per unit operating costs and capex. Oil volumes came in above target due to a couple of drivers. Production in our foundational Delaware Basin and Eagle Ford plays is outpacing our forecast due to better well performance on a collection of packages. Also, our base production performance continues to improve due to the application of proprietary EOG technology. Over the last several years, we have developed in-house artificial lift optimizers for several functions, including gas lift, plunger lift and rod pump operations. These state-of-the-art optimizers use algorithms to automate the set points of artificial lift and cost factors that allow for real-time adjustments to maximize production and reduce interruptions of third-party downtime. These cross-functional efforts by our production, marketing and information systems teams continue to improve and pay dividends.
The final driver of our second quarter volume beat was timing. We were able to bring online a package of wells a full month earlier than anticipated. As a result of volume performance beat to date and updates to our full-year forecast for Delaware Basin and Eagle Ford production, we are increasing our annual volume guidance by 1,800 barrels of oil per day and 10,000 barrels per day of natural gas liquids. The volume uplift helps lower our per unit cash operating cost guidance for the full-year as well as generates additional free cash flow. Total well costs are trending in-line with our expectations and resulting in a low-single-digit year-over-year decrease. Driven by both moderate market deflation and drilling efficiency gains, we are seeing these cost improvements across our entire multi-basin portfolio.
Regarding service costs, depletion is playing-out as we had forecasted at the start of the year. Spot prices for certain services have trended lower, while high-spec rigs and frac equipment remain relatively stable. We have secured 50% to 60% of our service costs with contracts in 2024, primarily for high-spec high-demand services to ensure consistent performance throughout our program. By securing these resources, we're able to focus on sustainable efficiency improvements to progress each one of our plays at a measured pace.
In our foundational Delaware Basin and Eagle Ford plays, operational efficiencies are driven primarily by longer laterals improving drilled feet per day. Longer laterals allow for more time being spent drilling down-hole and less time moving equipment on the surface. In addition, the more we extend laterals, the more benefit we derive from our in-house drilling motor program. EOG motors drill faster and are more reliable, which becomes more impactful on our drilling performance as lateral length increases. In the Eagle Ford, we are on target to extend laterals by 20% on average, and the year-to-date results has been a 7% increase in drilled feet per day. In the Delaware Basin, more than 50 wells or nearly 15% of our 2024 drilling program will use three-mile laterals compared to four three-mile laterals last year. Year-to-date, the efficiency impact from our three-mile program in the Delaware Basin is a 10% increase in drilled feet per day.
In the Utica Shale, we continue to collect data from our new packages and evaluate production history from existing wells as we test spacing patterns and completion designs across our 140-mile acreage position. Two new well packages, the Northern Shadow wells and the Southern White Rhino wells, as seen on Slide 12 of our investor presentation, have delivered strong initial results and continue to demonstrate the premium quality of this play. In addition to strong well results, since last quarter, we have added another 10,000 net acres to our Utica Shale position, bringing our total to 445,000. While we continue to make delineation progress, our focus in the near future for Utica development will be on the 225,000 net acres in the volatile oil window, where we have a more comprehensive geologic data set. Our large contiguous acreage position in the Utica lends itself to developing a long-life, repeatable, low-cost play competitive with the premier unconventional plays across North America. For 2024, we are on target to complete 20 net wells in the Utica across our Northern, Central and Southern acreage, which supports a full rig program and enables significant well cost reductions.
In Dorado, we continue to leverage the operational flexibility provided by our multi-basin portfolio to moderate and manage activity through the summer. Earlier this year, we decided to defer completions, while retaining a full rig program to maintain operational momentum. As a result, the drilling team has achieved a 13% increase in drilled feet per day year-to-date. Maintaining a steady drilling program allows us to capture corresponding efficiencies in advance and improve the play, while we continue to monitor the natural gas market.
Gas prices are improving into the second-half of the year and we remain flexible to respond to the market. As the year unfolds, we will continue to maintain capital discipline and leverage the flexibility of our multi-basin portfolio to ensure consistent execution across all operating areas. We also remain highly focused on sustainable cost reductions through innovation, operational performance and efficiency improvements to further drive down our cost structure and expand EOG's capacity to generate free cash flow.
Here's Lance for a marketing update.