Permian – update through February 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 30,341 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through February.

Total Production

Tight oil production in the Permian fell by over 600 thousand bo/d in February, the largest single-month decline in its history. Operations were severely impacted by the coldest weather in 30 years. Production plunged to just above 3 million bo/d (hz. wells only), the lowest volume in 2.5 years. Based on preliminary production data, we expect that March output was back to the January level.

Supply Projection

Since the bottom in August, 100 horizontal drilling rigs have been added to this play (222 vs 122), according to Baker Hughes. Based on this level of activity & current well productivity, output could soon start to rise again (if it hasn’t already):

This screenshot was taken from our Supply Projection dashboard.

Our lateral length calculations are now highly accurate, as for almost all wells we know the length of the frac’ed part of the lateral, as well as detailed directional survey data. This data is now also available in our real-time data subscription.

If we take a closer look at how well results have changed within this basin, we also find that growth, on a normalized basis, has stalled:

The top-right chart shows how well performance has changed in these 6 counties, as measured by the average cumulative oil recovered per lateral foot in the first 18 months, by year of production start. Only well results in Eddy were at a new high in 2019. The charts below show the changes in key completion parameters (lateral length & proppant loading).

However, it should be noted that these results are impacted somewhat by the dips in May 2020 and February this year, when a large number of wells were temporarily shut-in. Also, this does not mean that technology improvements are no longer visible; just that the impact of worsening geology and downspacing might have become larger.

Finally

We will have a new post on the Eagle Ford later this week.

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.