US Shale Oil Production Data- update through February 2017

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 68,713 horizontal wells in 8 US states, through February. Cumulative oil production from these wells reached 6.5 Gbo, while cumulative gas production topped 54.7 Tcf.

Oil production rose in February to over 3.7 million bo/d, even before typically upward revisions. All basins contributed to this growth. Gas production showed an even larger relative gain (switch “Product” to gas to see this), to over 35 Bcf/d, with just over half coming from the Appalachian basin. These wells are therefore responsible for almost 50% of total US gas production.

The “Well quality” tab gives an overview of the production profiles of all these wells, averaged by the year in which they started. I have preselected the major oil basins in this view. Major improvements in especially first year performance have significantly dampened the effect of fewer completions in the last 2 years. The wells shown here that started production before 2010 are located in the Bakken region (ND & MT), which appear to have better late-life performance.

The final tab (“Top operators”) shows the output and location of the 5 largest operators. You can see that EOG produces twice the amount of oil compared with the number 2, while Chesapeake holds a similar position for gas.

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate recovery” overview gives another view on the same production data, with again the major oil basins preselected. Also here these initial productivity gains are visible, and more so if you switch to gas. Displaying these curves by “Month of first flow” presents the most recent data, with the finest level of detail, and may help in estimating potential recovery ranges.

I sometimes use the 4th tab (“Production ranking”), to identify operators with very good, or mediocre, average well performance. For example, if you use the “First flow” selection to only select wells that started production in 2011-2015, you can see that of the operators with at least 10 wells, Enerplus and QEP score very high, with on average about 180-190 kbo in the first 2 years on production. Most of their production is in the Bakken core.

Next week I’ve planned another update on the Appalachian basin.

Production data is subject to, typically upward, revisions, especially for the last few months in Texas. For these presentations, I used data gathered from the following sources listed below. Production data for Oklahoma, where several tight oil & gas plays are located (e.g. STACK & SCOOP ), is not yet available on this website.

• Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission
• 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. I’ve estimated individual well production from well status & lease production data, as these are otherwise not provided. Because of this, I recommend looking at larger samples (>50 wells) before drawing conclusions. About 7% of the horizontal Permian wells in Texas are excluded, as these were mixed with too many vertical wells on a lease, making reasonable well profile estimations impossible. Formation data in Texas is only available on lease level; therefore in cases where wells on the same lease are drilled into different formations, this information is not accurate.
• Wyoming Oil & Gas Conservation Commission
• 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.