Pennsylvania – update through August 2021

This is an older blog post, you will find one on more recent data here

These interactive presentations contain the latest gas (and a little oil) production data, from all 10,292 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania that started producing from 2010 onward, through August.

Total production

Natural gas production in Pennsylvania rose with about 1% m-o-m in August, to 20.5 Bcf/d (Hz. wells only). The main reason behind the recent growth in output is that more wells were completed than were drilled. With just over 500 DUCs, the current drilled-but-uncompleted horizontal well count is the lowest in a decade.

DUCs

In the ‘Well status’ tab, you can find how this DUC count has changed over time, by selecting only the well status ‘DUC’. Below you can see the same overview, but colored by the year in which the wells were spud. The map shows the location of all these wells, using the same coloring:

EQT has with 161 the most DUCs of any operator in this area.

Supply Projection

With just 17 rigs drilling horizontal wells, a number basically unchanged in the last 1.5 years, more growth in natural gas output is unlikely in the near term in Pennsylvania:

This image was taken from our Supply Projection dashboard and it shows our outlook for natural gas production in the state, based on 17 active rigs and assuming no changes in rig/well productivity.

Well performance

In the 3rd tab, the performance is shown for all horizontal wells, by vintage year of first production. It reveals that well productivity is still at an all-time high. Looking at 5 largest producers, we see that especially Chesapeake is showing strong results:

The 40 wells that Chesapeake completed in 2020, which already have produced for at least a  year, recovered on average 6.7 Bcf of natural gas in the first 12 months. Cabot is the number 2, with just over 5 Bcf for the same metric (62 wells).

Top operators

In the final tab (“Top operators”), the output and well locations of the top 10 natural gas producers in Pennsylvania are displayed.

Finally

Next week we will have a post on the Haynesville and one on all covered US states.

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.

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.