As Lanman mentioned it in his earlier post, what Exxon doing now is very expensive, however, in the production phase cost will be reduced many ways. One those would be multi-pad drilling.

>So it looks to me like Exxon is doing things the right way, even though it's a lot more expensive. Between each frac job the crews have to hang around, or pack up and head back to Scotland, Germany, or whereever they came from.

"The costs can be further reduced by regarding all the wells drilled from the same spot as a single drainage area, and by planning stimulation, fracking and other jobs on a rolling schedule so they can proceed from well to well without interruption or loss of time. One potential benefit of this method is keeping the rig drilling away while fracking or even production testing is under way on another well that has already been completed."