Eagle Ford Oil & Gas Production Data – update through November 2016

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 18767 horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford region (TRRC districts 1-5), through November 2016.

As you can see, oil production in this region has fallen with about 600 kbo/d, since March 2015. Since September 2016 this drop has moderated. As the height of the dark blue area in November shows, oil production from wells that started in 2016 produced about 1/3rd of total production.

The curves in the “Well quality” overview show that well productivity hasn’t changed much in the last 2 years, on average. Newer wells recover a bit more oil initially, and follow then a very similar decline path.

If you only select EOG, which is by far the largest oil producer in this region, using the “Operator (current)” selection, you’ll see that its wells do show an improvement in 2016. The thickness of this curve already indicates that one likely factor behind this was the far smaller number of new wells put on production (217 through Nov. vs 350 in 2015).

The top graph “Well status” tab also shows that the drop in new wells put on production has basically halted near the end of 2016, at a level of about 100 wells per month. In November last year, 2/3rd of these wells was producing at a rate below 50 bo/d, as indicated by the bottom graph.

The new ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

The “Ultimate Recovery” overview shows how the 2010-2015 wells are heading towards their ultimate recovery.

The almost 2000 horizontal wells that started in 2011 have now hit a production rate of 16 bo/d, on average, with cumulative production of 114 kbo. Also this overview shows that later wells appear on a similar path, but are able to recover more oil initially; 2015 wells recover about 40 kbo more oil after 1 year on production, compared with these 2011 wells.

Switch to “Quarter” or “Month of first flow” in the “Show wells by” selection to see more granular, and recent data.

If you select “Gas” in the “Product” selection, you’ll see that for gas the story is quite similar. It also reveals that those 2010 wells, were much more gas-weighted.

I’ve planned another post on the Permian on Thursday, but the November production data for New Mexico is not available yet. If this doesn’t change, I will publish a new update on the Appalachian basin instead.

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 90% 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 presentation has 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.