Haynesville – update through March 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 6,024 horizontal wells in the Haynesville that started producing from 2007, through March.

Total production

Natural gas production in the Haynesville grew by almost 1.5 Bcf/d in March, more than recovering from the severe drop in the previous month. A fresh record was set at 11.5 Bcf/d, as we predicted in the previous post on this basin. Well productivity is at record levels (see “Well quality”). However, decline rates are also high, with wells declining exponentially in the first few years, and over half of total March output came from wells younger than 15 months (visualized in the chart above).

Horizontal drilling

Over the past month, 1 more rig was added to this basin, according to the Baker Hughes rig count. As of last week, more than half of the horizontal gas-focused rigs are active in the Haynesville (49 out of 89).

As is shown in this chart, natural gas prices have doubled since June last year, but the rig count is still far lower than in 2017-2018, when these prices were seen last.

Supply Projection dashboard

From our Supply Projection dashboard we can immediately see what these latest rig count numbers means for future supply in the Haynesville, assuming nothing else changes (which it surely will):

The top chart shows the historical horizontal rig count, by county, while the bottom chart plots historical and future natural gas supply, assuming a stable rig count and well/rig productivity. Note that interest in De Soto has fallen, while it grew in several other counties, notably Caddo, Panola and Red River.

Well productivity

How has well productivity evolved in these counties/parishes? That’s a question that can be easily answered with our Productivity Over Time dashboard:

I’ve selected here all the horizontal wells that came online since 2012 in the 4 core counties/parishes of the Haynesville (Caddo, De Soto, Panola and Red River). The maps plots the position of these wells, while the top right chart reveals how well results, as measured by the average cumulative natural gas production in the first 6 months, has changed each year, for each county. In 2020 all 4 were quite close in terms of this metric, at 2.5 – 3 Bcf of natural gas in the first 6 months. Since 2017, well performance has especially improved in Panola County.

These improvements were driven by longer laterals and far more proppants, as is shown in the 2 lower graphs. In Caddo Parish, horizontal wells that were completed in the last 2 years were frac’ed with over 35 million pounds of proppants, on average, up from less than 5 million in 2013.

Top operators

In the final tab (“Top operators”), the leading 10 natural gas producers in this basin are displayed. Most of these operators are at or close to record production, except for BP, which hasn’t completed any wells since early 2020.

Finally

Next week we will have a post on all covered US states.

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.