Enno Peters
This is an older blog post, you will find one on more recent data here
This interactive presentation contains the latest gas (and a little oil) production data, from all 9,600 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania that started producing from 2010 onward, through April.
Originally, we had a post on the Permian planned this week, but as the TRRC has not released comprehensive March & April data yet, we will postpone that one until next week (production data for New Mexico through April is already available in our subscription services). Luckily, Pennsylvania just published April production data.
Total production
Natural gas production remained unchanged at 19.3 Bcf/d in April. Compared with the peak in November (19.7 Bcf/d), production was down by 2%. Only 180 new horizontal wells came online in the first 4 months this year, the lowest number in the past decade.
Supply Projection dashboard
With only 18 rigs drilling horizontal wells (according to the Baker Hughes rig count), no production growth is expected in the coming quarters, as you may see in our Supply projection dashboard. By the end of year, output may have fallen below 19 Bcf/d (with no changes in rig count and rig/well productivity):
Well productivity
After many years of strong increases in well performance, the rate of improvements has slowed down since 2018 (see the “Well quality” tab).
Top operators
Cabot, the number 2 in the state (“Top operators”), saw the largest production decline this year. It only brought 13 new wells online in the first 4 months versus 23 in the same period last year. It still has the best average well productivity, as shown in our post last month.
Advanced Insights
The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:
This “Ultimate Recovery” overview reveals the relationship between gas production rates and cumulative gas production, averaged for all horizontal wells that began production in a particular year.
If you extrapolate the performance of recent wells, you’ll find that they are on a trajectory to recover 10 Bcf of natural gas before they decline to a rate of 500 Mcf/d.
Grouping this data by quarter or month of first production (using the “Show wells by” selection), allows you to see that average productivity is somewhat down since the end of 2018.
Finally
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article for which they used our analytics service: “EOG drilled more productive wells in Eagle Ford between 2017 and 2018 than in 2019, on average, according to a Wall Street Journal review of data collected by ShaleProfile Analytics.” (source: U.S. Frackers to Zero In on Richest Oil Fields After Coronavirus, behind paywall)
Next week we will have a post on the Permian followed by an update on the Eagle Ford.
Production data is subject to revisions.
Sources
For this presentation, I used data gathered from the following sources:
- Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
- 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.
News, trends and data for the US upstream industry
Novi Energy Newsletter
