North Dakota – update through December 2021

These interactive presentations contain the latest oil & gas production data from all 17,045 horizontal wells in North Dakota that started production from 2001 onward, through December.

Total production

Oil production in North Dakota from horizontal wells fell by 2% m-o-m (and 6% y-o-y), to 1.09 million b/d in December. Natural gas output dropped by the same percentage to just below 3.0 Bcf/d.

Supply projection

Drilling & completion activity has further increased in the past month, and 29 rigs were drilling horizontal wells as of last week (according to Baker Hughes). We now also project in this basin some growth ahead, all else being equal (from our Supply Projection dashboard):

The top chart displays the horizontal rig count over time, while the bottom one plots the total historical and projected oil production from existing and future horizontal wells. The latter reveals that a somewhat higher output level than can be sustained than is currently being produced, with these 29 active rigs.

Drilled but UnCompleted wells

The DUC count has fallen in the last 2 years, from over 700 in January 2020 to about 500 in December:

Permit Activity

Continental Resources, the leading oil producer in this state, was responsible for over 20% of all approved permits for new horizontal wells since the beginning of last year:

Top operators

The final tab shows the production history and location of the top 15 operators in North Dakota. Continental Resources was only 10% below it’s historical output record in December.

Finally

Next week we will have a new post on the Permian, for which we already have December production data in our subscription services.

Sources

For these presentations, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• DMR of North Dakota. These presentations only show the production from horizontal wells; a small amount (about 40 kbo/d) is produced from conventional vertical wells.
• 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.