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 16,888 horizontal wells in North Dakota that started production from 2001 onward, through October.
Total production
Oil production in North Dakota from horizontal wells was flat m-o-m for the 2nd month in a row, at 1.07 million b/d in October. Natural gas output, at 2.9 Bcf/d, was close to the historical high in November 2019 (3.1 Bcf/d). Only 492 new horizontal wells were completed through October, the lowest number since 2009.
Supply projection
Still, activity is also picking up in this basin, and as of last week 26 rigs are drilling horizontal wells, according to Baker Hughes, the highest number in more than 1.5 years. If well productivity and rig efficiency stay where they are, this level could sustain an output of just over 1 million b/d going forward (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
Production is down in each of the 4 core counties of the Bakken; Dunn, McKenzie, Mountrail, and Williams. But the decline is the steepest in Williams County, which produced only 136 thousand b/d in October, just half from what it produced 2 years earlier (271 thousand b/d in November 2019).
Here we can see that well productivity has not increased in Williams county since at least 2017:
As lateral lengths have somewhat increased during the last few years, normalized well productivity in Williams County has actually slightly fallen.
Interestingly, Williams County is still in 2nd place in terms of total gas production. The gas/oil ratio has steadily increased over the years, and newer wells reach a GOR of 4 Mcf/barrel within 2 years on production:
On the map all wells here are colored by the gas/oil ratio in the most recent month. The bottom right chart shows the performance of all wells, by vintage year of first production (production rate vs. months on production), while the bottom-right chart plots the average gas/oil ratio for the same wells.
Top operators
The final tab shows the production history and location of the top 16 operators in North Dakota. Unlike most operators, Enerplus has strongly grown production here, and is now almost as large as ConocoPhillips, which was for a short while was the number 2 in North Dakota (and the number 1 before 2008).
Finally
Early next week we will have a new post on the Permian, for which we already have production data through October 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.
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