West Virginia – update through December 2017

This is an older blog post, you will find one on more recent data here

This interactive presentation contains the latest gas production data through December, from all 2,368 horizontal wells in West Virginia that started producing since 2010. West Virginia only publishes production data once per year, and this post contains the data released last month.

Of the 3 states in the Appalachian basin (Ohio, Pennsylvania & West Virginia), unconventional gas production from horizontal wells is the lowest in West Virginia, just behind Ohio. Still, percentage wise there was a major growth spurt in 2017 (28%), as shown in the above graph, and last year ended at a level of 4.3 Bcf/d. Add this together with the production from the other 2 states, and total gas production (hz. wells only) in the Appalachian basin came in at ~26 Bcf/d in December, or about 1/3rd of total US gas production.

Average well productivity has improved every year since 2010, as the ‘Well quality’ tab shows. Two major contributing factors were increasing lateral lengths, and higher proppant loadings.

There are not many unconventional operators in this state, and the largest one, Antero Resources, is good for more than 40% of total production (see the ‘Top operators’)

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate Return” overview shows the relationship between gas production rates, and cumulative gas production, averaged for all horizontal wells that started producing in a certain year.

If you select ‘Antero Resources’ here in the ‘Operator (current)’ selection, you’ll note that its well productivity is quite a bit better than the average.

In fact, looking at the ‘Productivity ranking’ overview, it has the best average well results among all operators, as measured by the average cumulative production in the first 2 years.

The ‘Well status map’ shows where these wells are located: almost all in the north.

Ohio still hasn’t released Q1 production data, so later this week I will have another post on the Permian, followed by the Eagle Ford and all 10 covered states next week.

Production data is subject to revisions. For this presentation, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection
• West Virginia Geological & Economical Survey
• FracFocus.org

====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.