Enno Peters
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 15,674 horizontal wells in North Dakota that started production from 2005 onward, through January.
Oil production in North Dakota fell by 3% in January m-o-m, after a similar drop in the month before. Only 74 new wells were brought online in January, the lowest number since March 2019 (64).
In the “Well quality” tab you can find the production profiles for all these wells. It appears (see the bottom chart) that well productivity in the basin has peaked in 2018 (so far). New wells recover almost 250 thousand barrels of oil in the first 2 years, which is probably around half the amount they will eventually recover.
All the major operators were off their peak output, with Whiting almost at the lowest point in 7 years (“Top operators”).
The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:
This “Ultimate recovery” overview shows how these horizontal wells are heading towards their ultimate recovery. They are grouped by the year in which production started.
With all the wells that began production in 2019 now having at least 2 calendar months of production history (including the ones that started in December), we can see the initial curve for this vintage (in dark blue). These wells peaked 10% higher than the wells from the previous year, although they don’t seem to be on a trajectory to recover more oil (change the “Show wells by” selection to “Quarter of first flow”).
We just added a new dashboard in ShaleProfile Analytics, which shows the amount of flared gas in any selected area and time frame. For example, in this screenshot you can find the total amount of natural gas produced and flared in North Dakota over the past 15 years:
In the chart on the right you can see that the amount of gas flared (in orange) has dropped from the recent high to just over 400 MMcf/d. This is slightly above the level reached 6 years ago, but as the amount of gas produced (in red) tripled in this period, the percentage of flared gas has dropped significantly (15% in January).
The map shows the location of all the horizontal wells in North Dakota. They are colored by the amount of gas flared in the most recent month (red is more).
This dashboard also contains a chart that ranks all operators (or counties/wells) by the amount of gas flared. Continental Resources has flared the most (151 Bcf in the past 15 years, or 21% of gas produced). Marathon flared less (81 Bcf), but a larger percentage (37%).
For now we only have flaring data for Colorado and North Dakota. In the coming weeks, we aim to add New Mexico and Texas as well.
I am also happy to announce that we have just completed a major improvement to the maps in the Professional version of ShaleProfile Analytics : now we also show the land survey boundaries (townships/ranges/sections) for all the states that we cover. If you had a trial before, but would like to see all the new features, simply request a new trial.
We will have a new post next week.
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.
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6 Comments
Every rig should be stacked. Every well completion not in process should be postponed. PUD locations have zero value in the shale basins at sub $30 well head oil prices, and PDP values are minimal by the time LOE, G & A, transport and severance are paid. Many operators sold gathering systems and water disposal systems to raise cash, which means they are not paying “rent” to use those on top of all other expenses.
I suspect that long term debt for the entire sector is well above PV10, not just in the Bakken, but in all shale basins, including the Permian Basin. So this will make 2016 look mild.
Mike- I hope this knocks some sense into people. How long do investors want to see 10-15% uneconomic production growth? Been there, done that, had to use my T-shirt for toilet paper.
Look at PXD- a consulting reservoir engineering firm uses their working and revenue interest deck, expense data, and production curves and comes up with a Standardized Measure of Oil and Gas Reserves (SMOG) of $9.7 Billion at $52 buck WTI. Their balance sheet shows property plant and equipment of $14 Billion. They should take a $4.5 B write down today. Now at $30 buck oil, their stock market value still exceeds $12 Billion. Before this crisis, they were twice that.
What do people expect these companies which do no exploration, have no 500 PHD research centers, and can’t deliver anything but the same old same old Powerpoint lies to make the widget factory the oil business has become “function” to deliver? What are we missing?
Brooke PE. To me, the shale companies are now nothing more than royalty trusts (with a mountain of debt).
The locations are all known. The acreage is all defined.
The problem is unlike royalty trusts (and stripper production) there is still the massive decline rate and need for constant massive CAPEX, just to maintain production.
Right now, all shale companies have zero value outside of a call on the price of oil and natural gas.
JB, I think we are finally gaining on it. As the tide has gone out, the lies have all been exposed; its taken 11 years and the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars, but I think people have it sorted it out now. The PE money, and POTUS, will try to float it all for a little longer, buts it going down now with a thud.
I love the SPE thing; my tally book calcs. say that 70MM BO to fill the SPR will net the US shale oil industry less than $475MM, after all costs…that will pay its interest on total long term debt for about…17 days.
Enno,
The improvement in ShaleProfile’s maps is a spectacular improvement! Thank you.
Great to hear that John, thank you for the feedback!