North Dakota – update through November 2021

These interactive presentations contain the latest oil & gas production data from all 16,944 horizontal wells in North Dakota that started production from 2001 onward, through November.

Total production

Oil production in North Dakota from horizontal wells rose by 2% m-o-m, to 1.09 million b/d in November. Natural gas output increased as well and came in at 3.0 Bcf/d.

Supply projection

Although drilling activity has picked up in recent months, with 26 rigs drilling horizontal wells as of last week (according to Baker Hughes), from only 8 in September 2020, this level can only sustain about 1 million b/d assuming no changes in productivity (from our Supply Projection dashboard):

The top chart displays the horizontal rig count over time, while the bottom chart plots the total oil production from existing and future horizontal wells.

Well productivity

After several years of significant productivity increases, well results have barely changed in the 4 core counties in North Dakota since 2017. This is especially visible after normalizing for lateral length (as these have slightly increased):

Recent wells are on track to recover 25 thousand barrels of oil per 1,000 ft during the first 2 years on production, just 2% higher compared with the wells that came online in 2018.

Top operators

The final tab shows the production history and location of the top 12 operators in North Dakota. Continental Resources had with 169 thousand b/d of operated production a great November month, fueled by the excellent performance of the 19 wells it brought online in October.

EOG is no longer in this list, as it dropped to the 14th place with an output of only 22 thousand b/d (down from 96 thousand b/d in September 2014). The performance of its wells in Mountrail County (good for 2/3rd of its production) has rapidly deteriorated, probably due to too tight spacing:

Note in the bottom chart that the GOR has risen steeply for most vintages and that there is a corresponding decline in production rates (top chart). Where the 2007, 2008 and 2013 vintages before were on track to recover more than 600 thousand barrels per well (x-axis), that now has become unlikely.

Finally

Early next week we will have a new post on the Permian, for which we already have November production data 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.

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.