Permian – update through October 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 33,545 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through October.

Total Production

Permian tight oil production set a new output record in October, at 4.3 million b/d (after upcoming revisions, horizontal wells only), just above the previous record from March 2020. Natural gas production is also edging higher, and came in at 17 Bcf/d in October.

Drilling Activity

The horizontal rig count in the basin has increased to 275 as of last week (according to Baker Hughes), with over 1/3rd of the rigs now active in New Mexico:

Top counties

Eight counties in the Permian Basin are together good for 80% of total production. Here you can view them, and see how their production has changed through October:

Only 3 of these counties are responsible for almost all recent growth in production: Lea, Martin & Eddy.

Well productivity

The following overview presents how well results has changed over time in these 3 counties (Lea, Martin, Eddy):

The top chart shows how well productivity, based on the average cumulative oil recovered in the first 6 months, has changed over time in these 3 counties. Lea County scores the best recent results, with 154 thousand barrels of oil produced in the first 6 months, on average, despite having the shortest laterals and the lowest proppant loadings (see bottom charts).

Finally

Next week, we will have a new post on the Eagle Ford.

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.