Niobrara (CO & WY)- update until July 2016

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

This presentation shows the output of 5621 horizontal wells in several of the main Niobrara counties, located in Colorado and Wyoming.

July showed an uptick in oil production, which was the result of an increase in wells brought online in the second quarter.

Although well productivity seems rather similar in Colorado and Wyoming, activity has continued much stronger in Colorado, while it has fallen of a cliff in Wyoming; Colorado only shows a small decrease in total oil production since the oil price collapse, compared with an almost 40% decline in Wyoming. You can use the basin/state filters in the overviews to see the mentioned differences between these 2 states.

If you switch the product selection to “Gas” you’ll see that gas production from these horizontal wells has barely budged recent months, with July production still close to the all-time high in May.

Of the 4 major LTO basins, the wells in the Niobrara display the fastest declines in oil production, as can be seen if you compare the results in the “Well quality” tab to the ones I’ve presented in the other updates. This also explains why only about a third of the oil production in July came from wells that started production before 2015.

Around Friday next week (Nov 4th), I plan another update on the Eagle Ford.

For this presentation, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission
• Wyoming Oil & Gas Conservation Commission

====BRIEF MANUAL====

The above presentation has 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, and include or exclude categories.
• 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.