Eagle Ford – update through January 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 22,309 horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford region, that have started producing since 2008, through January 2019.

January oil production came in at 1,24 million bo/d, maintaining the same level as a year earlier. However, after revisions, it will end up closer to the 1.3 million bo/d that was produced a month earlier.

You will find the production profiles of these wells in the “Well quality” tab, where the Eagle Ford and Austin Chalk formations have been preselected. Well productivity has improved each year since 2010, on average, but only very slightly in 2018. Recent wells peak at a rate of just over 600 bo/d, and, if they keep following the path of their predecessors, will fall to 20 bo/d after about 6 years on production.

The final tab, “Top operators”, displays the production and location of the 5 largest oil producers. They all started 2019 below their highs.

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.

The 4.5 thousand horizontal wells that began production in 2014, the busiest year so far, have recovered an average of 155 thousand barrels of oil, after a little over 4 years on production. During this time, they declined from 382 bo/d in their peak month, to 30 bo/d (92% decline).

The following image was taken from a dashboard in ShaleProfile Analytics (Professional):

Here you can see the production from the top 8 oil-producing counties in the Eagle Ford (click on the image for a high-resolution version). It shows that most counties in the Eagle Ford are well off their peak production, but Karnes is still close. In contrast, activity in Burleson County, further to the northeast, has been picking up, albeit from a small base.

Early next week we will have a new post on the Permian, followed by one on the Haynesville. On Tuesday, at noon EST, we will host another show on the ShaleProfile channel at enelyst. This time we will take a closer look at the major shale gas basins in the US. I hope to see you there!

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 above presentations 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.