US - update through July 2019

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Entry posted by shaleprofile · November 5, 2019

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These interactive presentations contain the latest oil & gas production data from 115,629 horizontal wells in 12 US states, through July 2019. Cumulative oil and gas production from these wells reached 11.9 billion bbl and 136 Tcf of natural gas. Ohio and West Virginia are deselected in most dashboards, as their production data is less current. Oklahoma is for now only available in our subscription services.

July oil production was again at a record level, at well over 7 million bo/d (after upcoming revisions). If you switch product to “gas”, a similar picture emerges for natural gas production.

Initial well productivity in the major tight oil basins is also at a record high (see the “Well quality” tab, where the oil basins are preselected). But as mentioned in earlier posts, normalizing for the ~20% increase in average lateral length (which is possible in our advanced analytics service), we basically find that well results are unchanged in the past 3 years. Of course, that can still have a positive financial impact, if the economics per lateral foot have improved.

The 5 largest tight oil operators are at or near production highs (see “Top operators”), with EOG far in the lead.

But this group is not responsible for the most productive wells. We have made a major improvement to our “Productivity ranking” dashboard within our analytics service. You can now easily find a ranking of all operators (or for example counties), based on a well productivity metric. For example, in the following image you will find a ranking of all the US tight oil operators, with a minimum of 10 operated wells, by the average cumulative oil production in the first 2 years. Only horizontal oil wells are included that began production since 2014.

Click on the image to see the high-resolution version. As you can see, Enerplus, which is almost exclusively a Bakken operator, is in the lead. Its 82 wells produced an average of 275 thousand barrels of oil in the first 2 years.

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 horizontal wells that started production between 2009 and 2014 are now on average nearing 20 bo/d, as is visible in the plot above. Newer wells are on a path to recover almost double the amount compared with this group, before hitting this level.

Early next week we will have a new post on North Dakota. Production data through September is now already for 95%+ complete and available in our subscription services.

Production data is subject to revisions. For these presentations, I 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