Pennsylvania – update through July 2020

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 9,750 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania that started producing from 2010 onward, through July.

Total production

Natural gas production jumped almost 1 Bcf/d higher in July to 19.2 Bcf/d, nearing the record set in November last year  (19.6 Bcf/d). Prices also started to recover in July, from the ultra-low level in June ($1.63/Mcf). Almost 60 wells came online, vs. just 32 in the month before.

Supply Projection dashboard

But interest in the Haynesville has now taken over the Marcellus. In Pennsylvania, only 18 rigs were drilling horizontal wells as of last week, according to the Baker Hughes rig count. We project that this level is not sufficient to sustain output (see our Supply Projection dashboard):

Well productivity

Well productivity is still at a record high  (see the “Well quality” tab), but hasn’t increased much since 2017. Wells in the past few years are on track to recover 5-6 Bcf of natural gas in the first 3 years on production.

Top operators

In the final tab (“Top operators”), the top 5 natural gas producers in Pennsylvania can be found. It appears that EQT temporarily shut in some production in June, some of which was restored in July.

But the most prolific gas wells can be found in and near Susquehanna County, where especially Cabot is active. In this screenshot, taken from our Productivity Ranking dashboard, you can find the location of all horizontal wells in Pennsylvania, with at least 2 years of production data. The operators are ranked and the wells are colored by the cumulative gas recovered in the first 2 years:

Based on this metric, Cabot performed the best by quite a margin, as its 600 horizontal wells recovered on average 5.5 Bcf of natural gas in the first 2 years.

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.

Finally

Early next week we will have a post on the Haynesville, followed by one on all covered states in the US next week.

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.