Visualizing Permian Oil & Gas Production (Through August 2020)

[shaleprofile + 243]

This article contains still images from the interactive dashboards available in the original blog post. To follow the instructions in this article, please use the interactive dashboards. Furthermore, they allow you to uncover other insights as well.

Visit ShaleProfile blog to explore the full interactive dashboard

These interactive presentations contain the latest oil & gas production data from all 28,483 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through August.

Total Production

Tight oil production in the Permian was roughly flat in August, at close to 3.8 million bo/d (after upcoming revisions), probably slightly below the level a year earlier. Natural gas production set a new record at 15 Bcf/d (also after upcoming revisions; toggle Product to ‘Gas’ to see this).

Supply Projection

The horizontal rig count here has increased in the past 3 months, to 145 as of last week (source Baker Hughes). Still, this level of activity would long-term only be able to support a tight oil output about 1 million bo/d lower than in August (2.8 million bo/d), as you can find in our Supply Projection dashboard by selecting this basin:

 

Tight oil outlook in the Permian, by state, based on current drilling activity & productivity

Top Operators

In the final tab (“Top operators”) the production and positions are displayed for the 10 largest producers in the Permian. Several of these companies are now involved in some kind of M&A transaction. At the current pace, Exxon Mobil is likely to make it to the top-3 in the coming months (ignoring upcoming M&A deals).

Advanced Insights

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate recovery” overview displays the average production rate for these wells, plotted against their cumulative recovery. Wells are grouped by the year in which production started.

By extrapolating the recent vintages, you’ll note that they probably will end up with an ultimate recovery of close to 500 thousand barrels of oil, on average (ignoring extra stimulation measures).

The following screenshot, taken from ShaleProfile Analytics (Professional), shows the ranking of all Permian operators, based on the average 12-months cum. oil recovery.:

 

Productivity ranking of all oil producers in the Permian Basin with over 10 wells, based on the first 12-month cum. oil recovery. Hz. wells since 2016 only.

Of the major operators (100+ wells), Cimarex has the best results with 183 thousand barrels of oil in the first year, on average. All its wells included here are in the Delaware Basin.

Finally

We will have a new post on the Eagle Ford early next week.

Within ShaleProfile Analytics, we will start covering well permitting activity in the coming weeks. Check out more announcements on this topic in upcoming posts.

Production and completion data are subject to revisions.

Note that a significant portion of production in the Permian comes from vertical wells and/or wells that started production before 2008, which are excluded from these presentations.

Sources

For these presentations, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• Texas RRC. Oil production is estimated for individual wells, based on a number of sources, such as lease & pending production data, well completion & inactivity reports, regular well tests, and oil production data.
• OCD in New Mexico. Individual well production data is provided.
• FracFocus.org

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[Ward Smith + 6,615]

10 hours ago, shaleprofile said:

This “Ultimate recovery” overview displays the average production rate for these wells, plotted against their cumulative recovery. Wells are grouped by the year in which production started.

By extrapolating the recent vintages, you’ll note that they probably will end up with an ultimate recovery of close to 500 thousand barrels of oil, on average (ignoring extra stimulation measures).

I can well remember all the arguments on this site, some severe enough to chase certain interlocutors off about "ultimate oil recovery". Interesting that there seems to be enough data in to make this assessment. I'm assuming from context that number is per well?

[shaleprofile + 243]

Mr Smith,

Thank you for your question. As you can see from these decline curves, they appear rather predictable and I think we have sufficient data to make rough estimates of average EUR. The number I mentioned is indeed the average over many wells. I arrived at it by simply extrapolating the decline curves for the recent vintages (in the ultimate recovery chart) until a production rate of 10 b/d.

 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

36 minutes ago, shaleprofile said:

Mr Smith,

Thank you for your question. As you can see from these decline curves, they appear rather predictable and I think we have sufficient data to make rough estimates of average EUR. The number I mentioned is indeed the average over many wells. I arrived at it by simply extrapolating the decline curves for the recent vintages (in the ultimate recovery chart) until a production rate of 10 b/d.

 

 I concur with your assessment. In fact it lines up with what I said here about 2 years ago but all the data wasn't in yet. It still isn't all in, but the trend appears obvious. The chief scientist of a major shale producer had told me something similar.