Kaes Van't Hof
President and Chief Financial Officer at Diamondback Energy
Yeah, I mean, we set out when we announced the Endeavor deal thinking that 2025 would need between 22 and 24 rigs. You know, there's been a lot of efficiency on both sides throughout the year. And that 18 rig number is still going to accomplish the same amount of lateral footage as the higher rig count.
I think from a rig perspective, it's all about controlling variable costs, right? We also put pipe in the ground. We also use the raw materials, the same raw materials throughout the basin, but Diamondback's able to do that a lot faster. And so, if a rig line is $70,000, $80,000 a day, being able to execute with six less rigs, translates to less variable costs in the business. Similar story on the FRAC side. We think on the FRAC side, we kind of learned from the Endeavor side about the higher pump rate. We kind of increased our pump rate from 80 barrels a minute up to kind of 90 to 100. That allows us to, one, complete wells faster. There could be some benefits to the reservoir that we're studying very, very closely.
But overall, that also reduces the variable costs needed to run FRAC crews, which are much more expensive than a rig on a day-to-day basis. So, I think there'll be periods of time where we need to run five SimulFRAC crews next year. High level, we can see the SimulFRAC crews completing a little over 100 wells per year per crew.
And it's just amazing the efficiencies that both sides of the ledger have squeezed out of the business here in a year where -- we keep saying, oh, they're close to the asymptotic curve of efficiency. Well, they blew that out of the water this year. So kudos to the teams and the basin experts executing on our business.