North Dakota – update through November 2020

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 16,189 horizontal wells in North Dakota that started production from 2005 onward, through November.

Total production

Oil production in North Dakota fell by less than 1% in November at just below 1.18 million bo/d. This was a tad lower than the first peak in December 2014 (1.19 million b/d). Although more than 2,100 wells are still shut-in (up from 1,500 before the pandemic started and down from the 4,300 in May), I don’t expect this number to fall by much anymore, as it hasn’t over the last month. Through November 2020, 551 wells started production, which was less than half compared with the same period in the year before (1,176).

Supply projection

Last week there were 11 rigs drilling horizontal wells in North Dakota (according to the Baker Hughes rig count). These would be able to drill only about half the wells that were completed in 2020, and output will continue to fall if drilling activity is not significantly increased in the coming months/years:

This simple scenario assumes that the rig count would stay at 11 and that well productivity will not change. Output in North Dakota would then fall to just half a million b/d by the end of the decade.

The graph was taken from our Supply Projection dashboard, which is an interactive dashboard that allows you to simulate future tight oil & gas supply using your own rig count & well productivity assumptions.

Permit activity

From our new Permit Activity dashboard (available in the Professional version of ShaleProfile Analytics), we can see that the following operators have been most active in applying for new permits:

ConocoPhillips is in the lead with 54 approved permits for new horizontal wells in the 2nd half of 2020. The map on the left side shows the exact location of these permits. Of course, in the interactive version of the dashboard you can zoom in and find more information about each permit.

Top operators

The final tab shows the top 5 operators in the basin. WPX, which was just acquired by Devon Energy, is the only operator in this list that set a new production record in November.

Advanced Insights

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 quarter in which production started.

The impact of the recent shut-ins is clearly visible. You can also see that the 90 wells that came online in Q3 had the best initial start so far, as they peaked at over 900 b/d, on average.

Finally

Our next post will be on the Permian, followed by one on the Eagle Ford.

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.