Eagle Ford – update through September 2020

This is an older blog post, you will find one on more recent data here

These interactive presentations contain the latest oil & gas production data from all 25,046 horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford region, that have started producing from 2008 onward, through September 2020.

Total production

Tight oil production in the Eagle Ford held up at 1.1 million bo/d in September (after upcoming revisions). As is visible in the chart above, output from the ~2,800 wells that began production in the last 2 years contributed to 50% of total output in September.

Supply Projection dashboard

The horizontal rig count tripled from the low in August to 30 as of last week (according to the Baker Hughes rig count). But we see output falling below the May low in the coming months, unless activity is ramped up far more:

The above image is taken from our Supply projection dashboard after selecting this basin, and it shows what would happen if drilling & completion activity would continue to be based on 30 rigs in this basin. You can simulate output with your own assumptions on the rig count and productivity by using the parameters in the Instructions window.

Permit Activity dashboard

Operators have submitted only slightly more permits for new horizontal wells this year than in 2016, which was the low point in the past decade:

With our new Permit Activity dashboard it’s easy to see how many new wells are being permitted, where they are, and who is most active.

Top operators

The 8 largest operators in the basin are displayed in the final tab. EOG is still clearly in the lead, despite losing 1/3rd of its production in the 1.5 years through September (283  => 189 kbo/d).

Advanced Insights

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate recovery” overview reveals the relationship between production rates and cumulative production. Wells are grouped and averaged by the year in which production started.

Productivity per lateral foot (not shown here), has slightly fallen since 2017.

Finally

Next week we will have a post on gas production in the Haynesville.

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.

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.