Permian – update through September 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 33,169 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through September.

Total Production

Permian tight oil production continues to recover and in September topped 4.2 million b/d (after upcoming revisions, horizontal wells only). We expect that earlier in Q4 this year already a new output record was set. Natural gas production rose as well, and was close to 17 Bcf/d in September.

Supply Projection

The horizontal rig count in the basin has increased to 271 as of last week (according to Baker Hughes), enough for further growth in the coming months and years, assuming that well & rig productivity can be maintained (amidst several other constraints):

This image was taken from our Supply Projection dashboard.

Well productivity

In our previous update on the Permian, we showed how normalized well productivity is already falling in the southern part of the Delaware Basin. This time, we look closer at the 3 key counties in Midland Basin: Midland, Martin & Howard, together good for over 1.2 million b/d:

The chart on the right displays the average performance of the horizontal oil wells in these 3 counties, by year of first production. Note that it appears that since 2018, average well productivity has barely changed, after several years of significant improvements.

How does this picture change if we take into account that lateral lengths have also slightly increased during this time frame?

The overview above is the same as the previous one, except that production data was divided by the average completed length of the laterals. Based on this metric, productivity per lateral foot has already slightly fallen since 2016.

Gas/Oil Ratios

How have Gas/Oil Ratios (GORs) changed in these 3 counties over time?

On the map you can find the location of all the horizontal wells that have been completed in these 3 counties since 2013. They are colored by the GOR in the most recently reported month. The chart on the bottom right plots the GOR (in MCf/bbl) against cumulative oil production. All wells clearly get gassier over time; they start at 1 Mcf/bbl initially, but this grows to 4 Mcf/bbl after 200-250 thousand barrels of oil have been produced, on average. Note also that the wells that came online in 2020 have a faster increase in GOR than wells completed in the 2 years prior, although the effect so far is marginal.

Finally

We will have a new post on the Eagle Ford after Christmas.

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.