Haynesville – update through August 2021

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

This interactive presentation contains the latest gas (and a little oil) production data, from all 6,183 horizontal wells in the Haynesville that started producing from 2007, through August.

Total production

Natural gas production in the Haynesville continues to set new heights and in August was about 12.2 Bcf/d (after upcoming revisions).

Supply Projection

The horizontal rig count in the Haynesville has hovered at just below 50 since the start of the year, a far cry from the 150 rigs that were active here in 2011, but still close to the highest number in the past 9 years. We project more growth in natural gas output at these activity levels:

This image was taken from our Supply Projection dashboard. It reveals that on current trends, the basin could sustain over 20 Bcf/d of natural gas output in a couple of years, all else being equal.

Well productivity

Why is the basin suddenly able to grow so fast? The answer is in improving well results. Here we show how well productivity has improved in the top 6 counties in the Haynesville:

A well that came online in 2013 in De Soto recovered on average 1.9 Bcf of natural gas in the first year on production, while a well that began production last year recovered 5.2 Bcf in the same time frame. You can see that the improvements were similarly spectacular in the other 5 counties, with the notable exception of Caddo, where productivity has fallen since 2017 (despite that wells are frac’ed there with the highest proppant loadings, at close to 40 million pounds, as is visible in the bottom chart).

Permit activity

Although most production is still coming from De Soto Parish, Panola County in Texas is catching up fast. This year, already it counted the most approved permits for new horizontal drills:

Top operators

In the final tab (“Top operators”), the leading 10 natural gas producers in this basin are listed. Indigo, the number 4 in this list, has just been acquired by Southwestern Energy. Rockcliff, the number 3, is showing the fastest growth among these operators. Its recent well results in Harrison and Panola are impressive:

The 40 horizontal wells it brought online last year recovered over 5 Bcf of natural gas during the first year on production.

Finally

Our next post will be on all covered US states, followed by an update on North Dakota, which just released production figures for October (already available in our subscription services).

Production data is subject to revisions.

Sources

For this presentation, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources
• 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 above presentations 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 selected items.
• 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.