What about the Decline Rates in the Eagle Ford?

[shaleprofile + 243]

As it turns out, like the DJ Basin, the decline rate is probably larger than expected....

 

This image shows the performance of all horizontal wells in the EF that started production between 2011 and 2014. Only wells are selected that have produced predominantly oil, and which fell below a production rate of 60 bo/d not later than Nov 2015. There were 5,628 such wells, from a total of 11,554 horizontal oil wells.

The top chart shows the oil production rate (log scale), by month since they fell below 60 bo/d.

The bottom chart shows the average annual decline of all these wells.

 

Three observations:

1. After annual decline rates slightly stabilize the annual decline is close to, or above 20%.
2. Each year, the annual decline rate is higher. Some of this is expected, with younger wells in an earlier part of their decline curve, where the decline is steeper. But even if you correct for that, the decline rates of younger wells are higher. In particular, the wells from 2014 never really go below 25% annual decline.
3. Once wells reach a very low production rate (~10 bo/d), the decline rate accelerates again.

Edited February 6, 2019 by shaleprofile