Marcellus (PA) – update through January 2019

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 8,747 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania that started producing since 2010, through January.

Gas production in Pennsylvania started this year at a record 18.3 Bcf/d, with a y-o-y growth of 2.5 Bcf/d (16%).

In 2018 10% more wells began production compared with the year before (828 vs. 748) and, as you can find in the ‘Well quality’ tab, they peaked at a 16% higher rate (11,900 Mcf/d vs. 10,300 Mcf/d), on average.

The 2 largest natural gas producers in the state, Cabot and Chesapeake, started the year both with a new production record (“Top operators”).

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 began production in a certain quarter.

The 195 horizontal wells that came online in Q4 2018 (blue curve at the top) peaked at the highest rate ever, 13,700 Mcf/d, which was also double the peak rate of the wells that started 5 years earlier (Q4 2013). Those 372 wells have now recovered 4.6 Bcf of natural gas each and they are still flowing at 1,200 Mcf/d, on average.

In the 4th tab operators are ranked by their average well productivity, as measured by the cumulative gas production in the first year on production. Cabot, which is active in a very prolific area in Susquehanna County, comes out on top, with an average result of 3.3 Bcf in the first year. If you only select 2017 (using the “first production year” selection), this result further increases to almost 5 Bcf.

Later this week we plan to have a post on a new state! Next week, we’ll show again the latest production data for the Permian and 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.