US Shale Oil Production Map – update through April 2018

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 through April, from 90,168 horizontal wells in 10 US states. Cumulative oil and gas production from these wells reached 8.7 Gbo and 96.7 Tcf.

The number of well completions in the 2nd half of 2017 was about 60% higher than the average level in 2016, which explains most of the rise in output over the past year.

Average initial well productivity in the oily basins did not change much over this period, as shown in the ‘Well quality’ tab.

EOG, with an operated production capacity of almost half a million bo/d, is the largest shale oil producer in the US (see the ‘Top operators’ overview).

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate recovery” overview shows the relationship between cumulative production, and production rates, over time. Also here the oil basins are preselected, and wells are grouped by the year in which production started.

By changing the ‘Show wells by’ selection to ‘Quarter of first flow’, you’ll see more recent and granular data. It also reveals that since Q4 2016, the average production profile hasn’t changed as much as before, as noted before. The 1,323 horizontal wells that started in Q4 2016 have recovered each on average just over 140 thousand barrels of oil through April, and declined to a production rate of 140 bo/d.

Later this week I will have a new post on North Dakota, which just released June production.

Production data is subject to revisions. For these presentations, I used data gathered from the sources listed below.

• FracFocus.org
• Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission
• Louisiana Department of Natural Resources. Similar as in Texas, lease/unit production is allocated over wells in order to estimate their individual production histories.
• Montana Board of Oil and Gas
• New Mexico Oil Conservation Commission
• North Dakota Department of Natural Resources
• Ohio Department of Natural Resources
• Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
• Texas Railroad Commission. Individual well production is estimated through the allocation of lease production data over the wells in a lease, and from pending lease production data.
• West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection
• West Virginia Geological & Economical Survey
• Wyoming Oil & Gas Conservation Commission

====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.