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 136,302 horizontal wells in 13 US states, through March 2020. Cumulative oil and gas production from these wells reached 14.5 billion bbl and 165 Tcf of natural gas.
Total production
As the graph shows, tight oil production from horizontal wells set a record last November, at 8.3 million bo/d. It declined slightly through March, also after upcoming upward revisions I believe, before the covid-19 crisis really set in. The story was similar for natural gas production, which made a high of 81.4 Bcf/d last November (toggle the Product switch).
Supply Projection dashboard
After 4 months of plunging drilling activity, the fall in the horizontal rig count has somewhat stabilized in the last 2 weeks and currently 226 rigs are drilling horizontal wells in the Lower 48 states, according to the Baker Hughes rig count (68% decline over 4 months). Most of these rigs are in the Permian Basin (123), while the Haynesville was the only large basin in which activity has picked up in the last 2 months. Since the end of last year it has attracted more interest than the Marcellus.
In our Supply Projection dashboard, the effect of these dramatic changes is visible:

Based on the current rig count and assuming no changes in productivity (unrealistic but interesting), we project a decline of 50% in tight oil output and a 1/3rd fall in natural gas production by the end of the decade, counting from their recent highs.
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. Improvements have continued in recent years, but the rate has fallen. Wells that were completed in the last few years are on track to recover just over 200 thousand barrels of oil in the first 3 years on production, on average, with significant variance between the basins.
Top operators
The final tab (“Top operators”) shows the total production of the 10 largest tight oil (or gas) operators. Exxon Mobil has become the clear number 3, after EOG and Occidental (which acquired Anadarko last year).
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 just released May production data (already available in our subscription services). The state saw a larger than 300k b/d m-o-m decline, the largest ever.
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.
4 Comments
I was curious how you downloaded the data from the different regulatory bodies. I’m familiar with Oklahoma and Texas production Websites but it’s only one we’ll at a time. How do download large amounts of data from these sites
Thank you
Todd,
Thanks for your comment.
The data that you see in these interactive presentations and find in our services is the end result of a long and complicated process. The downloading of all the data is still relatively easy compared with cleaning all the data issues, parsing 100s of thousands of pdf files and solving all the puzzles, such as the Texas lease allocation. We have a dedicated team who is specialized in these challenges.
If you are interested in obtaining the data, I recommend taking a look at our
ShaleProfile Services. The free trial and data samples will give you a good idea what we have to offer.
Enno very interesting analysis. Do you have any opinions on the contribution that you believe DUCs will make in 2020? It appeared that your supply projection for oil took into account that some wells will be drilled during the year and will result in additional volumes added to offset some decline. Did you also make any projections for DUC well inventory falling and being completed in 2020 to add new volumes along with new wells drilled? Also do you have any opinions on the quality of the DUCs that are out there and the likelyhood they will add production similar to new drills. I have seen Platts data that discounts the EIA DUC count by 1/3 on the basis that many of them have been carried for 2 years or more.
Thank you Mark.
With our Supply Projection projection, we do take into account a work-in-progress inventory of DUCs, which is determined by the lead time parameter (in the instructions panel) from spud to first production.
But no other considerations are given to existing DUCs. I think the contribution from DUCs this year, but also in the future will always be relatively minor. They will never be able to hold up production for more than 2-3 months.
DUCs are costly drill, so probably a significant part of them are simply not economical to bring online at current prices.