Enno Peters
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 25,879 horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford region, that have started producing from 2008 onward, through May.
Total production
Tight oil production in the Eagle Ford was flat for the 2nd consecutive month in May, at 1.1 million b/d (after upcoming revisions); a loss of almost 0.7 million b/d since the peak in March 2015. Natural gas production, which has lost far less ground since the peak in October 2015, came in at 5.8 Bcf/d in May (toggle product to ‘gas’).
Supply projection
The number of horizontal rigs in the Eagle Ford has increased in the past year to 40 as of last week (according to Baker Hughes), half the number before the pandemic started.
Our Supply Projection dashboard shows what would happen if drilling activity would remain at this level:
As you can see, all else being equal, output would slowly decline over time. We estimate (using the interactive version of this dashboard) that 10 more rigs (50 in total) would be required to sustain current output, assuming well and rig productivity as seen in 2020.
Well performance
Between 2017 and 2020, average well productivity did not change significantly (horizontal oil wells only). However, the almost 400 wells that were completed so far this year performed quite a bit better; they are on track to recover over 100 thousand barrels of oil within the first 6 calendar months on production:
The chart on the right shows the average cumulative oil recovered versus months on production, with the wells grouped by year of first production. Only horizontal oil wells that have been completed since 2015 and weren’t refrac’ed and are included. Although the 2020 vintage had a poor start, it appears that that could be fully explained by the shut-ins that happened during the recent periods with extremely low prices or freezing temperatures, and it has recovered since.
Top operators
The output and location of the 10 largest operators in the basin are displayed in the final tab. EOG saw a significant reduction in output since early last year; it has completed just 73 in the Eagle Ford through May, versus 110 in the same period last year (and 156 in 2019). Most of its production from horizontal wells in the US is now coming from the Permian:
Finally
Our next post will be on Pennsylvania, which released June production data last week (which was almost immediately available in our services).
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.
News, trends and data for the US upstream industry
Novi Energy Newsletter
