Permian – update through December 2021

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

This interactive presentation contains the latest oil & gas production data from all 34,261 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through December.

Total Production

Permian tight oil production was flat at about 4.4 million b/d in December (after upcoming revisions, horizontal wells only). In 2021, some 4,200 horizontal wells were completed, about 20% more than in the year prior, although still well below the over 5,000 wells coming online in both 2018 & 2019.

Drilling Activity

The horizontal rig count in the Permian has risen to 303 as of last week (according to Baker Hughes), with exactly 30% of the rigs now active in New Mexico (91):

Well productivity

The following overview presents how well results have changed in the Permian:

The top chart plots the average cumulative oil recovered in the first year on production, by state. It reveals that in the New Mexico side of the basin, well results have steadily improved in the last decade, whereas in Texas the rate of improvement has slowed down since 2016, despite larger laterals and higher proppant loadings (see the bottom 2 charts). As usual in our charts, the thickness of the curves is an indication of the relative well count.

Finally

Next week, we will have a new post on all covered US states.

Production and completion data are subject to revisions.

Note that a significant portion of production in the Permian comes from vertical wells and/or wells that started production before 2008, which are excluded from these presentations.

Sources

For these presentations, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• Texas RRC. Oil production is estimated for individual wells, based on a number of sources, such as lease & pending production data, well completion & inactivity reports, regular well tests, and oil production data.
• OCD in New Mexico. Individual well production data is provided.
• 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.