Permian – update through March 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 30,700 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through March 2021.

Total Production

Tight oil production in the Permian rose by 800 thousand bo/d in March (horizontal wells only), more than compensating the fall in the preceding month due to the cold weather. At 3.9 million bo/d, output was the highest since April last year.

Supply Projection

Although the rise in the horizontal rig count has slowed in recent months, the 227 rigs drilling horizontal wells here as of last week (according to Baker Hughes) should allow output also to slowly start increasing again:

This screenshot was taken from our Supply Projection dashboard.

As is visible in the chart on the right, wells completed in recent years are trending towards somewhat lower ultimate recoveries per 1,000 ft of lateral length.

Permit activity

So far in Q2 (through June 16th), 1,494 permits for new horizontal wells have been approved in the Permian basin, the highest quarterly number since Q1 last year, when almost 2,300 locations were permitted:

The following dashboard, also taken from our Permit Activity dashboard, shows the approved permits in Q2 by operator:

EOG is far in the lead, with 217 approved permits, more than double the number 2 (Occidental, with 104). Note that the interactive version of this dashboard allows you to see exactly where the permitted locations are, together with other permit details.

Top operators

In the final tab (“Top operators”) the production and well positions are displayed for the 10 largest producers in the Permian. Pioneer Natural Resources and ConocoPhillips, the numbers 1 and 2, both set new production records in March.

Finally

We will have a new post on the Eagle Ford early next week, followed by a post on Pennsylvania.

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.