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Shale Profile.com


This interactive presentation contains the latest oil & gas production data from 19565 horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford region (TRRC districts 1-4), that started producing since 2010, through August 2017.

In the past month I’ve made again several major improvements to my Texas data:

  • Pending production. Recent production reports have been reported by operators to the Texas RRC, but are not yet processed, and therefore excluded from the published production for the related leases. This is a significant cause for the production revisions that we’ve seen in Texas. I now have access to these pending reports, and that has several benefits: it allows me to report also the last published month of production data (so August, instead of July), it should make the data far more complete (as revisions will be smaller), and this production is reported on well-level, which allows me to use it to improve the results of the lease allocation algorithm.

  • Permit data. Permit data is now also included, and this has helped in getting a more complete picture of the status of wells before they are put on production. Therefore, the “Well status” overview shows a more accurate overview of the wells that have been spud or are in the DUC inventory. Note that this type of data for the last few months is still quite incomplete, due to the delays in processing this information by the RRC.

  • Well tests. There are several states where production is reported by lease, and not by well (e.g. Texas & Louisiana). I rely on regular well test data (in addition to other sources) in order to estimate the production of individual wells on a particular lease. In Texas however, well tests are often significantly overstated by operators, as they are also used to set production limitations by the RRC (“oil proration schedule”). I have analyzed by how much, and in which cases, these tests are overstated, and am using these results to further improve the allocation algorithm. A big ‘Thank You’ to Mike Shellman, who has helped me to understand this topic in detail!

Looking at the above graph, we can see a significant drop in oil production in August, due to impact of the hurricane Harvey. This can also be seen in the “Well status” tab, which shows the number of completions per month: June saw the highest number since almost 2 years (172), but in August this was down significantly (63, still subject to revisions).


If you only select the well statuses “1. Spud” and “2. DUC” in that overview, you can see how this drilling inventory has roughly halved in the Eagle Ford since the end of 2014. Data since May is incomplete. The bottom graph shows that about half of these horizontal wells are now producing at a rate below 25 bo/d.


The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:


Actual BOPD Decline Curves From Realized Production Data in the Eagle Ford

In this “Ultimate Recovery” overview the relationship between production rates, and cumulative production is revealed. Longer laterals and larger proppant volumes have increased the initial production rates in recent years, but their impact on the ensuing decline seems limited.


If you only select EOG, which is by far the largest oil producer in this region, in this overview (1. use the “Operator (current)” selection, 2. click “All” to deselect all operators, 3. select EOG, 4. press “Apply”, 5. click anywhere on the chart), then you’ll see that its wells are performing better than average, but it also shows limited improvements in recent years.


Another way this can be see is in the 5th tab (“Productivity over time”). Here the performance of all wells is shown, as measured by the cumulative oil production in the first 24 months. Since early 2014, this metric is no longer growing.


Early next week I will have a post on the Permian, followed by one on all 10 covered states in the US in the 2nd half.


Production data is subject to revisions, especially for the last few months. For this presentation, I used data gathered from the following sources:

  • Texas RRC. Production data is provided on lease level. Individual well production data is estimated from a range of data sources, including regular well tests, and pending data reports.

  • FracFocus.org Use the amazing data collection tools in real time, here: shaleprofile.com


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