Eagle Ford – update through March 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 22,637 horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford region, that have started producing from 2008 onward, through March 2019.

March oil production came in at about 1.3 million bo/d, after upcoming revisions, 5% higher than a year earlier. Natural gas production is still hovering at a level close to 6 Bcf/d (switch ‘Product’ to ‘gas’).

The ‘Well quality’ tab shows the average production profiles of all these wells. The wells completed in 2019 are so far slightly ahead of earlier wells. But well productivity has stagnated since 2017, as you’ll find in the bottom chart (‘Cumulative production profiles’).

EOG and ConocoPhillips, the two leading oil operators in the basin are close to their historical output record, which they both set last year.

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 2,891 horizontal wells that started in 2012 have now recovered 150 thousand barrels of oil each, on average, while their production rate has dropped below 20 bo/d. The wells that have been completed since 2017 are on a path to do 200 thousand barrels before hitting a similar level. Of course, there are major regional differences. In the oil-rich counties Karnes and DeWitt, this metric is closer to 300 thousand barrels of oil.

In the 4th tab, the operators in this area are ranked by their well performance, as measured by the average cumulative production in the first 2 years. Of the operators with more than 100 wells, Devon and ConocoPhillips are showing the best performance. Their wells recovered on average 200 thousand barrels of oil in the first 2 years.

[Update] Early next week, we will have a new post on all covered states in the US.

Next week we will be a few days in Houston, before traveling to Denver for URTeC, where we have a booth (#951). Please contact us if you would like to meet us in either city!

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.