Pennsylvania – update through September 2020

By: Enno Peters
Published: Nov 25, 2020

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

These interactive presentations contain the latest gas (and a little oil) production data, from all 9,837 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania that started producing from 2010 onward, through September.

Total production

Pennsylvanian natural gas production fell in September by almost 1 Bcf/d, to ~18.5 Bcf/d (after upcoming revisions). In the first 9 months of this year, only 417 horizontal wells were completed in the state, well below the same period last year (537).

Supply Projection dashboard

The horizontal rig count has ticked up by 2 to 19 during this month (source: Baker Hughes rig count), which has improved the outlook for the basin. Where we projected a drop to below 14 Bcf by the end of the decade in our previous post (with ~17 rigs), we now project a more moderate decline, with output not falling below 16 Bcf/d (see our Supply Projection dashboard):

Natural gas outlook in Pennsylvania, based on current drilling activity and productivity (hz wells only)

A major factor behind the increase in activity has been the rise in natural gas prices, as the Henry Hub benchmark almost doubled since June ($1.63 / Mcf) to $3.00/Mcf at the time of writing.

Well productivity

Average well productivity is still creeping upward, as you will find in the “Well quality” tab. The 382 wells that started producing this year with already 2 months on production peaked at a rate of 16 thousand Mcf/d, significantly higher than earlier vintages.

Top operators

In the final tab (“Top operators”), the top 8 natural gas producers in Pennsylvania can be found. EQT, Cabot and Chesapeake are the clear leaders in the state, but their output has not drastically changed in the last few quarters.

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

A Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Early next week we will have a post on all covered states in the US.

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.