US – update through June 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 137,776 horizontal wells in 13 US states, through June 2020. Cumulative oil and gas production from these wells reached 15.1 billion bbl and 172 Tcf of natural gas. I originally planned a post earlier this week on the Haynesville, but had to cancel that (though this basin is still included in the presentations shown here).

Total production

US tight oil production rebounded in June by about 0.4 million bo/d to 6.4 million bo/d, as operators brought some wells back online with the improved pricing environment. Natural gas output stayed flat at 73 Bcf/d. Based on preliminary data (available in our subscription services), the recovery continued in July, but a return to the November high (8.4 million bo/d) is still a long way off and would require a significant increase in activity.

Supply Projection dashboard

This can also be seen in our Supply Projection dashboard; last week  there were 223 rigs drilling horizontal wells, according to the Baker Hughes rig count. At this level and assuming no changes in productivity, we project that tight oil production may decline to 5 million bo/d by the end of next year:

Top operators

The 10 largest operators (based on the previous 12 months production) are listed in the last overview (“Top operators”). These operators responded very differently to the oil price crash; ConocoPhillips and Continental Resources shut in most of their production, while Pioneer and Concho hardly made any adjustments.

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.

Finally

Early next week we will have a new post on North Dakota, which will release August production data in the coming days.

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.