Pennsylvania – update through February 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 10,014 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania that started producing from 2010 onward, through February.

Total production

Natural gas production in Pennsylvania was flat in February (after upcoming revisions), at about 20.8 Bcf/d (hz. wells only), after setting a record in January. In the first 2 months of the year, only 84 horizontal wells began producing.

Supply Projection

With 18 rigs drilling horizontal wells (according to Baker Hughes), drilling activity is near a decade low.  Our natural gas outlook for the state at this level can be found in our Supply Projection dashboard:

According to this view, declines will soon set in.

DUCs

However, an important assumption in that dashboard is that the DUC count doesn’t change (or more accurately, we assume a fixed WIP inventory of 2 months). But the following image shows that the DUC count has steadily declined in recent years, and this could still continue for a while:

In February this year, there were 570 horizontal DUCs in this state, down by 2/3rd since early 2012.

Well productivity

Well productivity is still edging higher in recent years and quarters, as you’ll find in the “Well quality” tab. This is also visible in this screenshot from ShaleProfile Analytics, in which the performance of recent wells is grouped by quarter of production start:

The 129 horizontal wells that started production in Q2 last year recovered 3.3 Bcf of natural gas in their first 9 months on production, and were at that moment still producing above 10 thousand Mcf/d.

Top operators

In the final tab (“Top operators”), the top 5 natural gas producers in Pennsylvania are displayed with EQT in the lead, ahead of Chesapeake.

Finally

Early next week we will have a post on all covered states in the US.

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.