North Dakota – update through February 2022

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

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 February.

Total production

Oil production in North Dakota from horizontal wells rose by less than 1% m-o-m in February, to 1.05 million b/d. Natural gas output increased by 2% to 2.8 Bcf/d. Only 63 new horizontal wells came online in the first 2 months of this year, compared with 180 in 2020 and 68 in 2021 during the same period.

Supply projection

As of this week, 30 rigs are drilling horizontal wells (according to Baker Hughes). At this level of activity, we project that current oil output can be maintained going forward, assuming constant rig & well productivity. From our Supply Projection dashboard:

Well performance

In the “Well quality” tab, the performance of all horizontal wells can be viewed. It reveals that results have not really improved since 2018, but neither have they deteriorated despite more infill drilling.

Top operators

The final tab shows the production history and location of the top 15 operators in North Dakota. Whiting and Oasis, here still shown as 2 separate entities, have announced a business merger and will together have an output on par with Continental Resources, currently the number 1.

Productivity Ranking

Which operators have the most productive wells?

This question can be answered with our Productivity Ranking dashboard:

Here you can see quite a difference between Oasis and Whiting; The 350 horizontal wells that Oasis has brought online since 2017 recovered on average 184 thousand barrels of oil, vs. 151 thousand barrels of oil for Whiting (425 wells). Devon and Marathon have shown the best performance, at close to 260 thousand barrels of oil (237 & 290 wells respectively).

Finally

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

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.

Key Takeaways

• North Dakota horizontal-well oil production increased by less than 1% m-o-m in February to 1.05 million b/d.
• North Dakota horizontal-well natural gas production rose by 2% m-o-m in February to 2.8 Bcf/d.
• Only 63 new North Dakota horizontal wells started production in January–February, versus 180 in 2020 and 68 in 2021.
• Baker Hughes reported 30 rigs drilling horizontal wells, a level projected to maintain current oil output with constant rig and well productivity.
• Well-quality results for North Dakota horizontal wells have not improved since 2018 despite increased infill drilling.
• Oasis averaged 184 thousand barrels of oil recovered in year one for 350 wells since 2017, versus Whiting’s 151 thousand barrels across 425 wells.
• Devon and Marathon showed the highest average first-year cumulative oil since 2017 at close to 260 thousand barrels across 237 and 290 wells.
• North Dakota DMR and FracFocus data underpin the analysis, which excludes about 40 kbo/d produced from conventional vertical wells.