Drill Schedule Planning Simplified: Coterra’s ArcGIS Dashboard Brings It All Together

As demand for natural gas to power everything from homes to data centers shows no sign of slowing in the United States, Coterra Energy Inc. recognized the need for a more efficient way to plan and execute the exploration and production of natural gas from its Marcellus Shale operations in Pennsylvania. Drill schedule planning, as it’s called, is considered a sacred topic among energy companies. Geographic information system (GIS) technology has not traditionally been central to this process, even at Houston-based Coterra.

“It dictates virtually everything that happens,” said Harold Lee, Coterra’s GIS supervisor. That includes identifying potential land acquisition targets, setting regulatory priorities, ensuring operations readiness, and managing overall production volume. “It drives the company’s bottom line.”

The complexity behind those decisions is significant. For a well to be ready for drilling, around 68 criteria need to be reviewed and approved. These include economic feasibility, lease expiration factors, permitting timelines, and infrastructure considerations. Many are influenced by their locations, reinforcing the critical role of GIS and mapping tools in guiding well development strategy.

To effectively develop the roughly 186,000 acres of land Coterra has leased in the Marcellus basin, representatives from technical disciplines across the region gather every week at the drill schedule meeting to discuss the viability of the projects. For many years, meeting presenters relied on a mix of static spreadsheets, PowerPoints, and web maps to deliver operational updates. Preparing materials for the meeting was a cumbersome task, requiring contributors from geology, engineering, land, and regulatory to spend hours compiling data from diverse sources and formats. Not only was this an inefficient use of their time, but it also meant that only a small number of individuals had the familiarity and expertise to run these meetings effectively.

As part of a company-wide data centralization effort, the corporate technology group deployed a custom-built scheduling app across all business units. The app incorporated a robust data architecture, a Gantt chart interface, and multiuser editing capabilities, which are all desirable features for a drill schedule planning app. While it created greater access to planning data in one centralized location, what the app didn’t include was a map view. Maps had long played a central role in the weekly drill schedule meetings, providing a quick and intuitive way to orient attendees to pad and well locations. “This left a void to be filled,” said Hunter Williams, GIS analyst, who led the development of the mapping solution.

Lee and Williams set out to create a dashboard that would capitalize on the data gathered by the scheduling app and display it in a way that could be more easily understood and presented. Their design philosophy was simple: The dashboard would be an extension of the official scheduling app, created specifically for meetings. And it would include a map.

One month later, the Drill Schedule Dashboard was ready.

Built using the ArcGIS Dashboards app in ArcGIS Enterprise, they added HTML5 coding to replicate the color-coded status indicators from the existing scheduling tool, making essential information instantly recognizable for familiar users. They further enhanced the dashboard’s layout with custom information boxes, calculated action dates not included in the source data, and added a clear numerical display of key metrics. Their priority was to balance information density with legibility, ensuring users could interact with the data without affecting the functional display. And, of course, the map is interactive with the data selections.

The result was a user-friendly dashboard that required no advance preparation and could be used by anyone to lead or participate in the weekly drill schedule meeting.

Over time, Lee and Williams continued to refine and expand the dashboard’s functionality. Users now have the option to view multiple drill schedules within the interface, enabling the business unit to evaluate different operational scenarios in the same meeting.

The dashboard also functions as a data quality control tool. The conditional logic embedded in the design means any wrong color status, blank attribute, or duplication would be a mismatch that draws attention to the users. Data is pulled from Coterra’s ArcGIS Server and is updated four times a day using automation set up in the ArcGIS Data Interoperability extension. Data adjustments from the source scheduling app are seamlessly reflected in the next update.

The success of the Drill Schedule Dashboard went beyond operational impact; it also sparked a significant shift in confidence toward the GIS discipline within the organization. Building on years of steady portal usage, the dashboard’s rollout led to a 40 percent increase in new-user engagement on Atlas GIS Explorer, Coterra’s branded ArcGIS Enterprise portal, signaling broader adoption and growing enthusiasm for GIS-driven solutions.

“Harold has convinced me that many of our reports and meetings can be enhanced with the combination of custom maps and integrated datasets. The Drill Schedule Dashboard is a great tool, and it has opened all of our minds to future applications. A picture is worth 1,000 words,” said Bryan Phillips, general manager of the Marcellus Business Unit.

By bringing to light key metrics and deadlines that were once buried in complex datasets, the drill schedule dashboard has fostered new ideas and better accountability in recordkeeping. When users saw how certain metrics could be tracked and visualized, they began asking for additional data points, such as pipeline capacity, deadlines for permit submission, and various projected activity start dates, further enhancing the effectiveness of the dashboard. This momentum not only enhanced the dashboard’s utility but also underscored the practical value of integrating GIS tools into daily workflows. The impact was significant: The success of the dashboard prompted requests for three new dashboards and nine additional web and mobile apps across other disciplines. At the time of this writing, the Marcellus Business Unit has expanded its offerings to a total of 24 GIS applications, with more in development.

From a business perspective, this broad adoption of a GIS-driven dashboard has helped to unlock the value of Coterra’s institutional data, making it accessible and visible to more people. From an executive or manager taking a quick look at overnight drilling progress to project managers or engineers looking at the data in detail, the dashboard is now a part of many daily workflows.

And for Lee and Williams, it has brought GIS technology to the forefront, along with a new appreciation of and trust in their work.