Permian – update through July 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 32,229 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through July 2021.

Total Production

Tight oil production in the Permian continued to rise to over 4.1 million b/d in July (after revisions, horizontal wells only). Natural gas production set a new record at 16.5 Bcf/d.

Supply Projection

The horizontal rig count in the basin has increased to 249 as of last week (according to Baker Hughes). Based on recent well & rig efficiency, we believe that this level is sufficient for the basin to continue growing production. Of course it is likely that the rig count will keep increasing with the current oil prices. In the below scenario, using our Supply Projection dashboard, we show what could roughly happen when the rig count rises further to 300 by the end of Q1 next year, and stays there:

In this scenario, tight oil output would set a new record of 4.5 million b/d by the end of the 1st half of 2022, and it would exit next year at almost 5 million b/d. You can see that New Mexico is responsible for most of the growth.

Well productivity

The following overview (from our Productivity over Time dashboard ), shows how well productivity has changed in the Permian, by state:

Note that the difference  in well performance between New Mexico and Texas has widened in the past few years, which probably explains why relatively more activity has moved to the Delaware basin.

However, that analysis did not consider that laterals have gotten longer in recent years. Using detailed completion data (perforated parts of the lateral and directional survey data), we can accurately determine the completed lateral length of these horizontal wells. Normalizing production by this completed length, we find that so far well productivity appears to have peaked in 2016:

Finally

We will have a new post on the Eagle Ford early next 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.