US – update through January 2019

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 102,269 horizontal wells in 11 US states, through January 2019. Cumulative oil and gas production from these wells reached 10.6 Gbo and 113 Tcf. Ohio and West Virginia are deselected in most dashboards, as they have a greater reporting lag. Oklahoma is for now only available in our subscription services.

January production from these wells was at a similar level as a month earlier, with about 6.6 million bo/d (after revisions). The Permian has been responsible for most of the growth in the past 2 years. If you exclude this basin (using the “Basin” filter at the bottom), you will see that combined production in the other basins only surpassed the 2014 peak in December.

The “Well quality tab” reveals that average well productivity in the major tight oil basins increased again in 2018, but only slightly. Also in this regard did the Permian have a positive impact; if you deselect this basin, you’ll note that the improvement is even smaller without it.

The final tab lists the top 5 operators in these basins. EOG increased its output by almost 50% in the past 2 years, and is now close to 600 thousand bo/d of operated capacity.

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

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.

Average peak rates have again increased in 2018 (636 bo/d vs. 567 bo/d in 2017).

If you switch Product to “gas”, you’ll see the natural gas production profiles for these same wells, most of it associated with oil production. These profiles have also improved a lot in recent years; the almost 8,000 horizontal wells that started in 2017 are on a trajectory to recover over 1 Bcf of natural gas each, on average. Of course there are major differences between and within these basins.

Early next week we will have a new post on North Dakota, which will release March production data by the end of this week.

In our subscription services you will always find the most recent data, as we process many of our data sources on a daily basis. For most states we already have February or even March (Wyoming and Montana) production data. Even with the $52/month Analyst subscription you can already access this data.

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.
• 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.