US – update through June 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 from 93,991 horizontal wells in 10 US states, through June. Cumulative oil and gas production from these wells reached 9.1 Gbo and 101.4 Tcf.

In just one and a half year, production from these wells grew by more than 1.5 million bo/d and 10 Bcf/d. Operators increased the pace of drilling and completion activity, and as the ‘Well quality’ tab shows, average well performance also slightly increased from 2016.

Wells were completed with longer laterals on average, and proppant loadings increased even more. You can try out our ShaleProfile Analytics service for more details on these trends, e.g. on an operator/basin basis.

The two largest shale oil operators, EOG and ConocoPhillips, set new records in June (‘Top operators’ tab).

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 wells are grouped by the quarter in which production started.

You can see that wells have been tracking steadily higher recoveries over the past years. Since the end of 2016, the pace of improvements appears to have slowed down.

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

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.