Permian – update through April 2020

By: Enno Peters
Published: Jul 21, 2020

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

These interactive presentations contain the latest oil & gas production data from all 27,497 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through April.

Total production

In April, about 3.9 million bo/d was produced from horizontal wells in the Permian (after upcoming revisions), a m-o-m decline of ~5%. Based on preliminary data for May, which is already for almost 90% complete in our subscription services, I expect to see a larger drop next month of around 10%. These declines are quite a bit smaller, relatively, than that we saw in North Dakota (see the previous blog post), which posted a 30% fall in May.

Well productivity

In the “well quality tab” the production profiles for all these wells are displayed. Well productivity edged higher last year, as can be viewed in the bottom graph.

Top operators

In the final tab the production and locations are shown for the 20 largest oil producers in the Permian. Exxon Mobil was one of the few operators that set a new record in April. Chevron, the number 8, just announced its acquisition of Noble Energy, which you’ll find at the bottom of this list. Most of Noble’s unconventional production comes from the DJ-Basin, although its share from the Permian has risen.

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.

Gas oil ratio

In the 9th tab the gas/oil ratio is displayed, by vintage (top chart) and overall (bottom chart). The gas/oil ratio has increased in the past 2 years from 3.0 Mcf per bbl in early 2018 to 3.7 in April this year.

Finally

More recent data is available in our subscription services (90%+ of the wells in the Permian already have April production data).

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

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

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.

Author

Enno Peters