Marcellus (PA) – update through April 2018

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 through April, from all 8,097 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania that started producing since 2010.

After the significant jump in output at the end of last year, gas production has remained fairly steady at a level around 16 Bcf/d.

Similar as in other basins, operators have completed their wells since 2017 with on average 30% more proppants than in 2016, and the result can be seen in the ‘Well quality’ tab: significantly more initial production.

Chesapeake and Cabot are the leading operators in this region (see ‘Top operators’), with each above 2 Bcf/d gross operated production capacity, but Range Resources and EQT are narrowing the gap. Although their average well productivity is lower than the first two, by completing more wells they were able to grow production more rapidly.

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 producing in a certain quarter.

Also here the increased well performance in recent quarters is clearly visible. Newer wells can expect to recover 3 Bcf or more in the first 16 months on production, while this took 5 years for wells that started in 2012.

In the 4th tab (‘Productivity ranking’), Cabot is showing the best average well results in this region among the larger operators, as measured by the cumulative gas production in the first 2 years (4.7 Bcf).

Ohio still didn’t release 2018 Q1 production data. Once it does, I will have a post on this state, and include also 2017 production data for West Virginia. Next week I plan to have an update on the Eagle Ford.

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

• Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
• 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.