Marcellus (PA) – update through August 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, from all 8,406 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania that started producing since 2010, through August.

Gas production from horizontal wells in this state set another record in August, at 17 Bcf/d. An important factor behind this was a large number of wells that were brought online during the month; 108, the highest in almost 4 years. Almost 25% of total gas production in August came from just 265 wells, that each produced at a rate higher than 10 MMcf/d (change ‘Show production by’ to ‘Production level’ to see this).

On average though, new wells peak at a rate of 10 MMcf/d, similar as in 2017 (see “Well quality”).

The 5 largest natural gas operators were all at or close to their historical highs in August (see “Top operators”). Cabot is now in the lead with 2.4 Bcf/d operated production, with almost all its wells in Susquehanna County.

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 year. For more recent and granular data, you can change this grouping to quarter or month, using the ‘Show wells by’ selection.

In the 2nd tab (“Cumulative production ranking”), the counties with horizontal wells are ranked by their cumulative gas production through August. Susquehanna is clearly in the lead, followed by Bradford. You can change this ranking to the level of well, in order to see the best performing wells to date. It will reveal that of the 8,400 wells, 9 have produced now each more than 17 Bcf, all of which are operated by Cabot or Chesapeake.

Early next week I will have a new update on the Permian, followed by the Eagle Ford later in the week.

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.