This is an older blog post, you will find one on more recent data here
These interactive presentations contain the latest oil & gas production data from all 27,209 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through March.
Total production
In March, about 4.1 million bo/d was produced from horizontal wells in the Permian (after upcoming revisions). The impact of the low prices only started to become visible in the following month, although, based on preliminary data (available in our subscription services), the drop appears to have been less than e.g. in North Dakota.
Supply Projection dashboard
But the horizontal rig count has fallen by 2/3rds since the start of this year, to just 131 rigs last week, according to Baker Hughes. At this level, and assuming no changes in rig & well productivity, the output would fall some time next year to below 3 million bo/d, as you can find in our Supply projection dashboard, after selecting this basin:

Surprisingly, as is visible in the graph above, output would still grow in the New Mexico part of the basin, as the rig count has declined less severely there.
Well productivity
In the “well quality tab” the production profiles for all these wells are displayed. Well productivity has steadily increased over the years, due to improvements in drilling & completion technology (esp. longer laterals and more proppants). Horizontal wells that began production in the past 2 years are on track to recover almost 250 thousand barrels of oil in the first 3 years on production, on average.
Top operators
In the final tab the production and locations are shown for the 20 largest oil producers in the Permian. As you can see, several operators set new output records in March, such as Concho Resources and Exxon Mobil. Occidental took the lead last year after it acquired Anadarko. The other 3 operators in the top-4 (Pioneer, Concho and EOG) were all at around 280 thousand bo/d in February. Strikingly, all 15 significantly increased output in the past 2 years.
Advanced Insights
The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:
This “Ultimate recovery” overview displays the average production rate for these wells, plotted against their cumulative recovery. Wells are grouped by the year in which production started.
Operator ranking
Which operators have the best performing wells in the Permian? The Productivity Ranking dashboard within our analytics service can easily answer this question:

On the right side you can see this ranking, with only the operators selected that operate at least 100 horizontal wells. SM Energy is in the lead, as the 234 wells that it brought online since 2012 (and have operated at least for a year) recovered over 160 thousand barrels of oil in the first year, on average. Ring Energy, which we discussed in our previous post, is near the bottom. On the map you will find all the selected wells, colored by this same metric (red is better).
Finally
More recent data is available in our subscription services (90%+ of the wells in the Permian already have April production data). 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.
1 Comment
Unfortunately, after 3 years and 250,000 gross BO, after payment of LOE, G & A, gathering and severance taxes, at $40 well head oil prices, one of these wells will have returned between $4 million and $4.8 million to the working interest owners, assuming a 25% royalty burden.
Seems like wells such as these cost in the $9-10 million ballpark to drill, complete and equip?
I don’t keep up on the costs quite like I did in 2015, when I thought that making money was actually a goal of shale operators.
So if there are any shale cheerleaders out there left, please dispute my figures.
Oops, forgot that the well head oil price in March and May was under $25, April was under $15 and June will barely be $30 in the PB. So for wells with first flow since about the middle of 2019, any chance at profitability is pretty well shot.
Wonder how much 2020 NOL Pioneer will add to the $5 billion of NOL’s it reported in the 10K as of 12/31/19?
Maybe someday all of these shale wells will be money makers for the next operator, assuming same figure out how to efficiently operate hz wells with a 7-10,000 TVD and a 10,000 +/- horizontal well bore attached, that produce 5-40 BOPD. Good luck with that XOM, CVX, etc. Glad to see you are setting yourself up to be stripper well operators of the most difficult wells to operate in the lower 48 (CO2 floods excepted).
$100 oil might save some of these companies, but it needs to hurry up and get here. Not going to happen until COVID-19 is out of the picture.