North Dakota – update through July 2018

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

These interactive presentations contains the latest oil & gas production data from all 13,628 horizontal wells in North Dakota through July, that started production since 2005.

July oil production in North Dakota came in at 1,269 kbo/d, after a month-on-month rise of 3.4%, setting a new record for the state. An important factor behind this jump were the 141 new wells that started production, the highest number in 3 years. Completion activity was higher in the first 7 months of this year compared with last year (649 vs 525 wells).

Several operators set new production records, including Continental Resources and ConocoPhillips, which just surpassed Whiting as the 2nd largest producer in this area (see ‘Top operators’).

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate recovery” overview shows how all these horizontal wells are heading towards their ultimate recovery, with wells grouped by the quarter in which production started.

It shows that so far the wells that started in Q3 2017 had the best start; after 11 months they recovered on average 169 thousand barrels of oil.

Although lateral lengths haven’t changed much in North Dakota, proppant loadings have doubled in the past 4 years, to close to 1,000 lb/ft.

In our online analytics service, these trends can be easily analyzed by play and operator. Request a free trial here!

Next week I plan to have a new post on the Marcellus.

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 30 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.