This is an older blog post, you will find one on more recent data here
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 155,094 horizontal wells in 13 US states, through October. Ohio and West Virginia are excluded, as both haven’t yet reported October production data.
Total production
US tight oil production rose to almost 7.6 million b/d in October (after upcoming revisions), 0.4 million b/d higher than 12 months earlier. Tight gas continued to rise as well, and came in at 72 Bcf/d in October (excluding Ohio & West Virginia and after upcoming revisions).
Drilling activity
Currently 554 rigs are drilling horizontal wells in the 13 US states that we cover (according to Baker Hughes). Of these, 448 are drilling oil wells:

Although the rig count has significantly increase in the past 1.5 years, the last time that WTI was over $85 (Oct 2014), there were ~1,100 rigs drilling horizontal oil wells, double the current number.
Permit activity
Permit activity for new horizontal wells in the 3 major tight oil basins (Permian, Bakken & Eagle Ford) has however not increased during the last few months as the next overview shows:

In January, only 461 new permits were approved in the Permian Basin (out of 623).
Top operators
In the final tab the output and location of the 12 largest US shale oil producers are displayed. After several acquisitions, ConocoPhillips is now also a contender for the top spot, next to EOG.
Finally
Our next post will be on North Dakota, which already released December production data for all wells (available in our subscription services), followed by an update on the Permian.
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.