Louisiana Gas Production Data – update through April 2017

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

This interactive presentation contains the latest gas production data from all 3196 horizontal wells in Louisiana, that started production since 2007, through April.

Just over 2 months ago, in collaboration with ShaleCast, I published the first post on gas production data in the Haynesville play, Louisiana. This time, with 4 months extra production data, and from horizontal wells all over Louisiana, I can revisit that post. Furthermore, I now expect to be able to regularly posts updates on Louisiana, and will make the data available in the Get the Data page.

With Louisiana included in my dataset, there are now 10 US states that I cover, including 9 out of the top 10 states based on recent horizontal drilling activity (only Oklahoma is still missing).

As production from the Haynesville makes up almost all gas output in Louisiana, the changes compared with last time are minor. Still, by looking at the formations for example, you’ll see more details now, e.g. you can find that the production from the Cotton Valley formation is at a decent 2nd place.

The Haynesville play extends into Texas, and gas production there was already covered in my previous US posts.  By selecting the “Haynesville” in the formation selections of those posts, you’ll find data on the performance of these wells on the Texas side.

The production profiles shown on the 3rd tab are not much different than the previous post. As I filtered out some vertical wells, the average well performance is slightly better.

The “Well status” tab shows the extraordinary rise in number of wells from 2009 till the end of 2011, after which drilling activity dropped by more than 2/3rd. Since then, completions have been at a slightly higher level, resulting in a steady decline in DUCs over time.

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate Return” overview shows the relationship between gas production rates, and cumulative gas production, averaged for all horizontal wells that started production in a certain quarter.

You can see that in general well performance hasn’t changed much since 2010, although there have been 2 good quarters in 2016. Nevertheless, well designs have radically changed in recent years: the average lateral length is now about 6.5k feet (4.5k in 2010), while average proppant volumes are now at 17 million pound per well, double the amount just 3 years ago.

The “Cumulative production ranking” tab ranks all these wells according to cumulative gas production. When you want to find individual well production in Louisiana, you’ll encounter a similar puzzle as Texas: production is reported by unit (which can contain 1, or more wells), and not by well. I’ve developed an advanced algorithm that takes results from semi-annual well tests into account when allocating this unit production over the wells on it. Because of this, I belief the results shown this time have improved in accuracy.

You’ll find the detailed location of all these wells in the “Wells status map” tab; it shows nicely how almost all gas production here is located in the northwest.

I would like to thank Bill Pittman for all his support in getting a better understanding of the detailed situation in Louisiana.

On Thursday or Friday I’ll have another update on the Eagle Ford, followed by the Permian early next week. For those of you interested in the underlying data, I also plan to make available a far more extensive database with well, production, and completion data, in the coming 1-2 weeks.

On a sad note: the website OilPro, which hosted the largest forum for professionals related to the oil & gas industry, is closing its doors this week. I have greatly benefited from the knowledge shared there, and the many interesting discussions & feedback I received on my posts. My gratitude goes to the OilPro team for this, and to everybody who contributed on it. I hope we’ll find a replacement somehow. Keep in touch in the meantime!

Production data is subject to revisions. For this presentation, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources
• 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.