Eagle Ford – update through April 2019

This is an older blog post, you will find one on more recent data here

This interactive presentation contains the latest oil & gas production data from all 22,792 horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford region, that have started producing from 2008 onward, through April 2019.

April oil production came in at about 1.3 million bo/d, unchanged from a month earlier and just a few percent higher than a year ago. Natural gas production hovers still around 6 Bcf/d (switch ‘Product’ to ‘gas’). Production from the ~2,500 horizontal wells that began operations in 2018 and in the first 4 months of this year (represented by the light and dark blue areas) contributed 54% of oil production, and 45% of gas production in April.

As you can find in the ‘Well quality’ tab, new wells recover about 150 thousand barrels of oil in the first 2 years on production, as well as 0.6 Bcf of natural gas. Of course, there are major regional differences.

The two largest operators in the Eagle Ford, EOG and ConocoPhillips, probably set new output records in April (after upward revisions), while the others in the top-5 linger well below their historical highs (see the ‘Top operators’ dashboard).

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate recovery” overview reveals the relationship between production rates and cumulative production. Wells are grouped by the year in which production started.

You can see here, by going through these vintages, that average well productivity increased basically every year. However, this ignores that well designs have changed radically over the years. In the 4 years since 2014 for example, laterals increased by just over 20% in length, while proppant loadings more than doubled. You can examine these trends, and normalized productivity, easily in our advanced analytics service, also by operator and/or area.

For example, see here a screenshot in which we compare the average well productivity of oil wells in the Permian and the Eagle Ford:

The chart on the top right show how the average cumulative oil production in the first 2 years on production, has changed over time in each of these 2 basins. Production has been normalized for lateral length (simply by dividing by the lateral length and multiplying by 1,000 to get the recovery per 1,000 ft).

Based on this metric, well performance also increased in the Eagle Ford up to 2017 (the last year for which we can use the data, given that we need 2 years of production data for this metric), from 20.0 thousand bbl in 2012, to 23.6 thousand bbl in 2017. But the average amount of proppant use almost tripled (from 4.3 to 12.0 million pounds per completion) in the same time frame.

Tomorrow, Tuesday August 5th, at noon (ET), we will present a new monthly briefing (~20 minutes) on all the major tight oil basins in the US, in our ShaleProfile channel on enelyst. Registering is free: enelyst registration page.

Later this week we should have a new post on the Niobrara, followed by an update on all covered states in the US early next week.

Production data is subject to revisions, especially for the last few months.

For this presentation, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• Texas RRC. Production data is provided on lease level. Individual well production data is estimated from a range of data sources, including regular well tests, and pending lease reports.
• FracFocus.org

====BRIEF MANUAL====

The presentations above have many interactive features:

• You can click through the blocks on the top to see the slides.
• Each slide has filters that can be set, e.g. to select individual or groups of operators. You can first click “all” to deselect all items. You have to click the “apply” button at the bottom to enforce the changes. After that, click anywhere on the presentation.
• Tooltips are shown by just hovering the mouse over parts of the presentation.
• You can move the map around, and zoom in/out.
• By clicking on the legend you can highlight the related data.
• Note that filters have to be set for each tab separately.
• The operator who currently owns the well is designated by “operator (current)”. The operator who operated a well in a past month is designated by “operator (actual)”. This distinction is useful when the ownership of a well changed over time.
• If you have any questions on how to use the interactivity, or how to analyze specific questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Enno Peters

Enno Peters is General Manager at Novi, where he has build an AI-driven data & analytics platform tailored for oil & gas operators and energy investors. Prior to Novi, Enno founded ShaleProfile which was acquired by Novi late 2021.