Eagle Ford Oil & Gas Production – update through March 2017

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 19270 horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford region (TRRC districts 1-5), that started producing since 2010, through March 2017.

After two years of declines, output from horizontal wells rose again in the first quarter of 2017, as I expect revisions will push the March numbers above those of February. New horizontal wells have been put online in 2017 at a rate of about 120 per month, which is similar to 2016, while far below the level in 2014 when almost 400 wells per month started production.

The decline profiles are rather steep in the Eagle Ford; as you can see by following the top of the orange area, the production from wells that started before 2015 dropped from 1.6 million barrels of oil per day at the end of 2014, to about 400 thousand barrels of oil per day in March this year. Therefore, the underlying field decline was 75% in just over 2 years.

The behavior of these wells can be clearly seen in the “Well quality” tab, where year-on-year changes appear minor, except in the early production phase. As lateral lengths increased by about 20% in the last 6 years, and proppant volumes increased on average threefold, the initial output of new wells has grown significantly.

In the “Well status” map you can see the number of wells that started producing each month in the top graph. The bottom graph shows the composition of all these wells by production level; In 2012 the percentage of all horizontal wells that were producing below a rate of 50 barrels per day was below 40%. In March 2017 this has increased to 70%, with more than 40% of them below 25 bo/d.

The last tab (“Top operators”) shows the performance of the largest operators. If you switch to Gas (using the “Product” selection), you can see that Anadarko, a significant producer in this area, fell to almost zero output in March. This drop was caused by the sale of most of its acreage early this year.

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

The “Ultimate Recovery” overview shows how all these horizontal wells are heading towards their ultimate recovery, as their production rates slow down over time. They are grouped by the quarter in which they started production.

While the wells that started in early 2011 have now hit a rate of below 15 bo/d, on average, new wells are starting with a peak rate of over 600 bo/d. I have selected only wells in the Eagle Ford formation this time (see the “Formation” selection).

In the “Well status map” tab the location and status of all these wells are shown. The accuracy of these locations has strongly increased, as I now have the exact locations of more than 99% of these wells (this was about 85% in the past).

On Thursday I will publish another update on the Permian.

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. Individual well profiles are estimated from well status & lease production data, as this data is not provided by the RRC. Detailed location data is available for more than 99% of the wells displayed; the remaining wells are shown near the center of the county in which they are located. I’ve no spud, DUC, or plugging information on wells & DUCs in Texas, so these statuses are unavailable. Formation data in Texas is only available on lease level; therefore, in cases where wells on the same lease are drilled in different formations, this information is not accurate.
• 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.