Pennsylvania – update through January 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 January 2021.

Total production

Natural gas production in Pennsylvania set a fresh record in January, at 20.8 Bcf/d (hz. wells only), despite that only 39 new horizontal wells came online.

Well productivity

In the 3rd tab (“Well quality”), you’ll find that the 2020 vintage wells readily outperformed earlier wells. They are on track to recover almost 4 Bcf of natural gas in the first year on production, about 30% more than the wells that came online in the year before.

Top operators

In the final tab (“Top operators”), the top 8 natural gas producers in Pennsylvania can be found. All 8 are at, were producing close to their historical output record in January, with EQT in the lead at just over 4 Bcf/d.

Supply projection

Low natural gas prices have made drilling in the state less attractive, and as of last week only 18 rigs were drilling horizontal wells (according to Baker Hughes). From our Supply Projection dashboard, you can find that our outlook for the state is slightly negative, but stable:

Productivity ranking

In the prolific 4 most Northeastern counties, only 7 operators have more than 10 wells. The following screenshot, from our Productivity Ranking dashboard, reveals how these operators rank in terms of well results, as measured by the average cumulative gas recovered in the first 12 months:

Based on this metric, Cabot handily outperforms the others, at 5.6 Bcf of natural gas in the first 2 years, on average (632 wells included).

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.