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 117,989 horizontal wells in 12 US states, through September 2019. Cumulative oil and gas production from these wells reached 12.4 billion bbl and 140 Tcf of natural gas. West Virginia is deselected in most dashboards, as its production data is less current. Oklahoma is for now only available in our subscription services.
Even preliminary production data has September oil production in all these states at a new record, at over 7.3 million bo/d. After upcoming revisions, I expect it to finally come in at around 7.5 million bo/d. These figures are somewhat higher than the previous US update, as we are now able to include more production data for recently completed wells in New Mexico, and Ohio is also up-to-date.
At 7.5 million bo/d, the y-o-y growth was 0.9 million bo/d. Although high, this is only half of the increase in the year before (1.8 million bo/d in the twelve months through September 2018).
The production profiles for all these horizontal wells can be viewed in the “Well quality” tab, where the major tight oil basins are preselected. It shows that average initial well productivity improved every year in the past decade. However, as highlighted in previous posts, no improvements are seen after 2016, when you normalize production data by lateral length (possible only in our ShaleProfile Analytics service).
The largest operators (based on output in the previous 12 months) can be found in the final tab (“Top operators”). Exxon Mobil is now also in the list, and immediately jumped to the 2nd spot. About 2/3rd of its unconventional production comes from the Permian, where it has significantly ramped up operations.
The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:
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.
The over 10,000 wells that began production in these plays in 2018 recovered on average 121 thousand barrels of oil, in the first 10 months on production. This is 8% more than the wells did that began a year earlier, over that time frame. Lateral lengths increased by 6%, and proppant loadings by 12%, on average, between those years.
Finally, I wanted to share the following graph (from our advanced analytics service), which displays how oil production from horizontal wells has developed in the top 6 states, through September 2019:
It highlights the enormous rise in production from Texas, which is now good for more than half of total output. But since early 2017, the percentage growth rate was even higher in New Mexico.
Early next week we will have a new post on North Dakota, which just made November production data available in their subscription service (showing a preliminary minor drop in output). This was immediately made available for our subscribers as well.
Production data is subject to revisions. 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
- 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.
5 Comments
Thanks Enno,
Trying to get a better handle on first flow wells. Can you give me an idea how many months it takes for these numbers to stabilize, so that the reported number is within 1% of the “final” first flow well count? It seems it is on the order of 6 to 12 months from your most recent reported month, but my guess is that it is pretty easy for you to pull up the data and narrow it down to a one to two month window (perhaps 8-9 months as a WAG).
Thank you.
Dennis,
I understand it’s an important question, but it is unfortunately not so easy to answer. The reason is that we continue to try to get even more up-to-date data into our data platform. Also, how up-to-date each state is can change over time.
I do think that the gap has narrowed significantly, especially with this post. I further believe that August production and completion numbers shown here (“first flow” in the Well status overview) are within just a few percent of the final tally. We will see in the coming months if that is true.
Enno,
It also occurs to me you do a great service for all of us by providing this information at no cost. Have you ever considered a “budget” subscription service, that gives all the stuff you currently produce for the public at no cost, perhaps at $10/ month or $100 per year.
Might not be worth your trouble, but this is by far the best data available and some small fee seems warranted.
Dennis,
Thank you for the kind words!
I started with this blog 4 years ago as I thought it was important for many people to understand developments in the shale industry better, and to have access to actual production results. I still think that this is important, and therefore I have no plan to start charging for this blog, even though I realize that others ask money for similar data and insights.
If one of our subscription services does not add more value for you, the best I can hope for is that you use the information from this blog and inform others about it (which I am happy to see you already do!).
Thanks Enno,
Historically it seems the most recent few months were significantly lower, than they later became. Of course just like me you cannot predict the future (though with the data you have at hand, I expect your expectations of the future might be closer than my own.)
Your work here is amazing!