US – update through May 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 137,397 horizontal wells in 13 US states, through May 2020. Cumulative oil and gas production from these wells reached 15.0 billion bbl and 170 Tcf of natural gas. Ohio and West Virginia are also included, as both just released Q2 production data.

Total production

US tight oil production fell in May by about 1.4 million bo/d to 6.0 million bo/d, while natural gas declined by 5 Bcf/d. These monthly declines were twice the size compared with April. This stunning collapse was of course caused by operators who decided to shut in wells and delay completions, due to the low pricing environment. Based on preliminary data (available in our subscription services), most basins saw a slight recovery in June and July as some oil wells were brought back online.

Supply Projection dashboard

Last week, there were 221 rigs drilling horizontal wells (unchanged from the week before), 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 below 5 million bo/d by the end of next year (see our publicly available Supply Projection dashboard) :

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. Well productivity obviously has taken a hit due to the recent shut-ins.

Well status

When you select only the well status “first flow” (“Well status” tab), you can see that the number of wells that came online in May dropped to around 350 (subject to upward revisions), down from 560 in April and almost 1,200 per month last year.

The following image, from ShaleProfile Analytics (Professional), shows how the number of inactive wells (zero oil & gas production) in the major tight oil plays almost doubled in April and May to close to 11 thousand wells:

The map displays the location of all these inactive wells, the chart on the right visualizes how this number has changed over time by basin.

Top operators

The 5 largest operators (based on the previous 12 months production) are listed in the last overview (“Top operators”). EOG, Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips cut production almost by half compared with earlier this year, while Occidental and especially Pioneer took far less action.

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 July production data for almost all wells (already available in our subscription services). Production in the state recovered further in July by over 100 thousand bo/d.

We will also make a major announcement next week!

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.