Eagle Ford – update through February 2022

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 26,973 horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford region, that have started producing from 2008 onward, through February.

Total production

Tight oil production in the Eagle Ford has fallen by over 50 thousand b/d since September, and came in at close to 1.05 million b/d in February, the lowest output in 12 months (Hz. wells only, after upcoming revisions). Natural gas production in February was close to a 12-month high, at over 6.0 Bcf/d.

Drilling Activity

Drilling activity has doubled compared with 12 months ago, and last week  74 rigs were drilling horizontal wells (of which 63 focused on oil), according to Baker Hughes:

On the map on the bottom left side, you can see that Webb County is especially popular, with 15 active rigs.

Well performance

How have well results changed over time in the hottest counties of the basin?

The following overview shows how well performance, as measured by the average cumulative oil recovered in the first 12 months, divided by the lateral length, has changed over the past decade in the 5 top oil-producing counties:

As the chart in the top-right corner reveals, based on this metric, well productivity has stalled and in some areas even fallen in the last few years. Wells that were completed last year in the DeWitt county are however still displaying great results, with over 36 thousand barrels of oil produced in the first 12 months, per every 1k feet of lateral length.

Top operators

The output and well locations of the 20 largest operators in the basin are displayed in the final tab.

Finally

Next week we will be back with another post.

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

Sources

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.