US – update through November 2021

These interactive presentations contain the latest oil & gas production data from 156,185 horizontal wells in 13 US states, through November. Ohio and West Virginia are excluded, as both haven’t yet reported November production data.

Total production

US tight oil production rose to over 7.5 million b/d in November (after upcoming revisions), an annual gain of 0.4 million b/d. Tight gas output set a new record in November, at about 72.5 Bcf/d  (excluding Ohio & West Virginia and after upcoming revisions).

Drilling activity

Currently 594 rigs are drilling horizontal wells in the Lower 48 states (according to Baker Hughes):

The big jump in oil prices over the last week is not visible here yet, but note that the last time WTI was above $100 (2014), there were over twice the number of rigs in the US shale plays.

Well productivity

The following overview shows how well productivity (normalized for lateral length) has changed in the 3 major tight oil basins:

The top chart reveals that normalized well results (as measured by the average cumulative oil production in the first 12 months) is no longer growing in the tight oil basins, but is still at a high level. Horizontal oil wells that were completed in 2020 recovered on average between 15 thousand (Eagle Ford) and 18 thousand (Permian) barrels of oil in the first year on production, for every 1k feet of lateral length. The thickness of the curves corresponds with the related well count.

Top operators

In the final tab the output and location of the 15 largest US shale oil producers are displayed. EOG and ConocoPhillips are together good for over 1 million b/d of tight oil production.

Most of the action is in the Permian Basin. Here we share a ranking of all the major operators in this basin (over 100 operated wells), by average well productivity, including only horizontal oil wells that were completed after 2017:

The ranking uses the same productivity metric as in the previous overview. It reveals that EOG is in the lead, as its wells recover almost 28 thousand barrels of oil in the first year on production (820 wells), for every 1k feet of lateral length. Occidental Resources, which has failed to grow output, is also showing good well results with 23 thousand barrels of oil on this metric (827 wells). Further analysis revealed that its wells are however declining more rapidly than in the past.

Finally

Our next post will be on North Dakota, which already released January production data  (available in our subscription services).

We are also now starting to cover conventional production in the US. Most conventional wells and their production history are already available in our data subscription. For more information, just contact us!

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.