Permian – update through May 2020

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 27,683 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through May.

Total Production

Production from horizontal wells in the Permian fell by around 0.5 million bo/d in May to 3.3 million bo/d, the largest monthly decline since the shale revolution started here.

Based on preliminary data for June (already available in our subscription services), it appears that a far smaller drop happened in the month after.

Supply Projection

Only 115 horizontal rigs were active in this basin last week, according to Baker Hughes, down from almost 400 earlier this year.  At this level, and assuming no changes in rig & well productivity, the output would continue to fall to below 3 million bo/d early next year, as you can find in our Supply projection dashboard:

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 quarter in which production started. The curves are starting to tip downward due to the extra shut-ins during the past few months.

Finally

We will have a new post on the Eagle Ford later this week, followed by one on Pennsylvania (which just released June production data, already available in our services).

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.