Enno Peters
This is an older blog post, you will find one on more recent data here
This presentation contains the latest oil & gas production data from 18333 horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford region, until July.
Although the individual decline in oil production from legacy wells is less steep than what we saw last week in the Niobrara, the overview shows that total oil production from wells starting before 2015 still dropped by 68% since the end of 2014, until July. Drilling and completion activity however has dropped much more than in the Niobrara, with the result that production in July was at a level last seen in the end of 2013.
I expect July production to finally come in about 10% higher than shown here, after a year of RRC revisions. These revisions mostly concern 2016 vintage wells.
In the “well quality” tab we can see that the average well productivity hasn’t changed much since 2012, especially after the initial 12 months on production. I’ve added now the lease names to the well names for most wells, so if you are familiar with certain leases you can search the well name in the “well name” filter.
The “well status” tab shows the status and production level of all these wells over time. Due to fewer new wells, and ageing old ones, the bottom graph shows that in July about 40% of these horizontal wells was producing less than 25 bo/d. Gas wells are included in this count, which is why I recommend looking at both oil and gas production from these wells when judging their performance.
Coming Tuesday (November 8th), I plan another update on the Permian, followed by a post on horizontal shale production in all the covered states on Friday 11th.
Production data is subject to revisions, especially for the last few months in Texas. 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.
- 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 selected items, and include or exclude categories.
- 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.
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6 Comments
Hi Enno,
How do you define “the Eagle Ford Region”? Districts 1,2,3, and 4 maybe?
Dennis,
I divided Texas in 3 basins, based on the RRC Districts:
1. Eagle Ford : districts 1-5
2. Permian : districts 7C, 8, 8A
3. Other : the remaining districts
As mentioned in my previous post, most horizontal wells in this Eagle Ford region are located in the Eagle Ford formation, but there are a few others, like the Austin Chalk. You can use the “formation” filter, or grouping, to see this more clearly.
Hi Enno,
Thanks. The formation filter isn’t there for well status or quantity produced. I was looking for output data for eagle ford only, for basin, there isn’t really a choice it is all or nothing.
Dennis,
Indeed this filter is not available (yet).
In the total production overview however there is a way to see it:
– Select “Show production by” “formation”
– click on the “Eagle Ford” in the legend; you have the choice to only select this formation.
Is there enough data to get some indication of what the end of life shut off flow is looking like yet?
Gadsby,
Regarding oil production, I think there is good data for each of the major basins on how horizontal wells behave until about 20 bo/d. After that, data gets really scarce. I suspect that the behavior of wells below this level will heavily depend on pricing, and other factors (such as plugging costs), which will make it more difficult to say anything definitive about them. A very interesting topic, of which I hope we can learn more in the coming quarters. The bottom graph in the “Well status” overview shows that the number of these low-producers is rising fast now.