US – update through April 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 136,940 horizontal wells in 13 US states, through April 2020. Cumulative oil and gas production from these wells reached 14.8 billion bbl and 167 Tcf of natural gas. Ohio and West Virginia are excluded from this update, as their production data is only reported through March.

Total production

US tight oil & gas production fell by about 700 kbo/d and 2.5 Bcf/d in April (after upcoming revisions) respectively, the largest absolute and relative m-o-m declines since the start of the shale boom. Of course the low, and even negative, oil prices in March and April were the main cause, which led many operators to shut in their oil wells.

Supply Projection dashboard

In the past 3 weeks, the horizontal rig count has stabilized at a level just above 200, according to the Baker Hughes rig count. Our Supply Projection dashboard reveals that this level isn’t enough to keep production from falling in the months and years ahead:

Tight oil production may fall to around 5 million bo/d by the end of next year, as is displayed in the tooltip in the screenshot, all else being equal (rig count & productivity).

Well productivity

In the “Well quality” tab you can find the production profiles for all these wells, with the main tight oil basins pre-selected. Well results are still at an all-time high, but no longer significantly improving.

Top operators

Not all major operators decided to reduce supply in April, as you will find in the final tab (“Top operators”). EOG, the number 1, did and its output fell by 100 kbo/d in April or about 1/6th.

Advanced Insights

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

ShaleProfile Analytics improvements

We have used the time during this pandemic to work on some major improvements to our services:

1. Well economics. A new dashboard is now available, with which it is very easy to perform an economic evaluation on any number of selected wells. See the remaining NPV in a table, or on a map, or simulate what a new drill could be worth. You can set your own assumptions (NRI, well costs, etc) while CME prices are imported every day. Our own production forecasts are used, which we have thoroughly tested on forecasting accuracy, leaving you to focus on the right assumptions and examining the results.
2. Directional surveys. We have now directional survey data for over half of the wells in our database (mainly in Texas, North Dakota and Colorado). This allows us to show them very precisely on a map, and improve our lateral length calculations. This also made it possible for us to determine how well spacing relates to well productivity (see the next item). Directional survey data is now also included in our ShaleProfile Data service.
3. Well spacing. A new dashboard will be available soon (within 2 weeks) in our service, in which we can show how well spacing relates to productivity. As usual, our service easily aggregates the results for you, so you can quickly see the forest through the trees.

We’re happy to provide free trials and demos to show you how this all could help you!

Finally

Early next week we will have a new post on North Dakota, which just released June production data (already available in our subscription services). The state saw a small uptick in output in June.

Production data is subject to revisions.

Sources

For these presentations, we used data gathered from the sources listed below.

• FracFocus.org
• Arkansas Oil & Gas Commission
• Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission
• Louisiana Department of Natural Resources. Similar to 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
• Oklahoma Corporation Commission – Oil & Gas Division
• Oklahoma Tax Commission
• 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.
• Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining
• Automated Geographic Reference Center of Utah.
• West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection
• West Virginia Geological & Economic 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.