Marcellus (PA) – update through November 2017

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 8,141 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania since 2010, through November 2017.

A remarkable jump in gas production in November caused a new record high at about 15.5 Bcf/d (counting unconventional horizontal wells only). As you can see in the above graph, production from older wells also rose, which is rather unnatural. Thus it appears that operators have been holding back their wells in the months before the winter period, as they did in the previous 2 years.

You’ll note in the “Well quality” tab that average well productivity is up again in 2017.

The leading operators in this region are Chesapeake and Cabot, each with just over 2 Bcf/d of operated production volume (“Top operators” tab).

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.

The chart also reveals the better initial performance of wells in recent quarters. However, they don’t clearly appear to be on a higher recovery path yet than the wells that started in late 2014.

The 2nd tab (“cumulative production ranking”) ranks all these wells by cumulative gas production. The best well has now produced more than 20 Bcf of natural gas, while the median is closer to 3 Bcf (most are still producing).

On Monday next week I will have a new post on all 10 covered US states.

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.