North Dakota – update through July 2021

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 16,576 horizontal wells in North Dakota that started production from 2005 onward, through July.

Total production

Oil production in North Dakota from horizontal wells fell m-o-m by 50 thousand bo/d in July (5%). Although 46 wells began producing in July, the same number as in June, their average initial performance was poorer than usual, which explains about half of the decline. Natural gas production fell as well, to 2.8 Bcf/d.

Supply projection

As of last week, 22 rigs have been drilling horizontal wells in the state (according to Baker Hughes), the highest number since April last year. Our supply projection dashboard shows that still a few more rigs are required to maintain current output:

Well productivity

In the 3rd tab (Well quality), you can view how average well productivity has changed over time in North Dakota.  The 2020 vintage wells are so far outperforming earlier wells. Based on our production forecasts, which we generate on well level whenever new production data comes in, we can also see that in the core of the Bakken, wells from last year are forecasted to have the best performance so far:

As you can find in the right-hand chart, these wells from 2020 are forecasted to produce over 0.5 million barrels of oil within their first 20 years on production, on average. After 20 years, they will have declined to a production rate of about 12 b/d.

Water production

The following overview, from our Water Production dashboard, shows the water/oil ratio for all the wells in the 4 core Bakken counties, while in the top-right graph the total amount of produced oil (green) and water (blue) produced is displayed, as well as the water/oil ratio (yellow):

In July, 1.5 barrels of water were produced for each barrel of oil (displayed in yellow, right-hand axis), the highest number in over a decade. This was likely an aberration, but this metric is trending ever higher.

Top operators

The final tab shows the production history and location of the top 12 operators in North Dakota. The output from Continental Resources, the number 1, has fallen to 150 thousand b/d in July, down by 25% from the peak in November 2019 (205 kb/d).

Finally

Next week we will have a new post on the Permian.

Ohio just released Q2 production data, which is already available 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.