Pennsylvania – update through June 2020

• By: Enno Peters
• Published: Aug 24, 2020

 
 

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

 

This interactive presentation contains the latest gas (and a little oil) production data, from all 9,693 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania that started producing from 2010 onward, through June.

Total production

Natural gas production fell by 0.4 Bcf/d in June to 18.4 Bcf/d, after a slightly larger drop in the month before. Year-over-year growth was just 0.15 Bcf/d. Natural gas prices hit a record low in June of just $1.63 per Mcf, the lowest so far in the 21st century. Only 32 new wells were brought online in June, compared with 56 a year earlier.

Supply Projection dashboard

In the Marcellus Basin overall only 26 were drilling horizontal wells, as of last week (according to the Baker Hughes rig count), a lower number than in the Haynesville (32). As our Supply Projection dashboard reveals, at this level production growth will be negative in the Marcellus going forward, while natural gas output will rise in the Haynesville  (assuming no changes in rig count and rig/well productivity):

Well productivity

Well productivity is still at a record high  (see the “Well quality” tab), but hasn’t increased much since 2017. Wells in the past few years are on track to recover 5-6 Bcf of natural gas in the first 3 years on production.

Top operators

In the final tab (“Top operators”), the leading 10 natural gas producers in Pennsylvania can be found. EQT, the number 1, saw the largest relative and absolute fall in output this year, to below 3 Bcf/d in June.

Advanced Insights

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate Recovery” overview reveals the relationship between gas production rates and cumulative gas production, averaged for all horizontal wells that began production in a particular year.

Finally

Later this week we will have a post on the Haynesville, followed by one on all covered states in the US next week.

In the coming 2 weeks, we will release a new version of ShaleProfile Analytics, called “Ultimate”! With this version, operators, service companies, mineral owners, financial analysts and traders can easily have access to production forecasts, understand the economics of the wells they are interested in, simulate future tight oil & gas output and analyze the impact of well spacing. Contact us for more information: Contact us

Over the weekend we got into some discussion about well performance in Midland Basin: https://www.investorvillage.com/groups.asp?mb=19168&mn=286532&pt=msg&mid=21049668

A recent article from Enverus seemed to indicate that the average 2014 well in the Central part of this play has so far recovered around 75 bbl per lateral foot, a number far higher than what we see in the data (~27 bbl). Who is correct? Place your comments (or bets!) here below for discussion and we will gladly spend effort in figuring out this discrepancy.

Production data is subject to revisions.

Sources

For this presentation, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
• 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

Background in AI, worked on developing Supply Chain Planning & Optimization solutions for Quintiq, setting up its business in China. Focus on company direction and the technical development of ShaleProfile’s platform.