Eagle Ford – Page 18 – Peak Oil Barrel

Texas RRC Oil and Gas Report, August Data

10/21/201410/21/2014 Ron Patterson 511 Comments

The Texas Rail Road Commission just released their oil and gas production report with the August data. As you probably know by now that this data is incomplete. The latest months will all turn down but as more companies report their data, which can be up to two years late, the data will reflect what is actually produced.

There is something strange about the August data however. This is the first time since last November that all four data sets, Crude, Condensate, Gas Well Gas and Casinghead (Associated) gas, are show lower production than the previous month. So keeping in mind that the previous months data was just as incomplete as this months is, the data should, if production is increasing, still show an increase. This month however, it does not.

All oil data is in barrels per day and all Gas data is in MCF per day with the last data point August 2013.

The August crude only data was 124,723 bpd below July.

Texas Condensate was moving up rather smartly until June of 2013. Since then it has been erratic. It is clear that Texas condensate production is not increasing very much and may now actually be declining. Texas condensate (incomplete data) dropped 41,175 bpd, July to August.

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Texas RRC Data September Report

09/21/201409/21/2014 Ron Patterson 211 Comments

The Texas RailRoad Comission released their Oil & Gas Production Data with production data through July 2014. The data was actually released Thursday but was all messed up. They corrected their mistake Friday except for condensate. Then yesterday they updated everything. As I have stated before, the RRC data, for the last several months, is incomplete. Nevertheless we can gather some indication of what is happening.

Texas C+C is still increasing at a pretty hefty clip. The EIA data is just an estimate of course but I think it is pretty close to what the data will show when it is all in. I have included six months of data to show how it is increasing month to month.

Texas crude only was down in October and November but has been up every month since. The declines in the last few months is due to incomplete data.

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The EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report

09/08/201409/08/2014 Ron Patterson 168 Comments

The Eia’s latest Drilling Productivity Report is out. However they have only updated the PDF file. The spreadsheets have not been updated and still have last month’s data. But I will give you what the PDF file shows and perhaps add some charts tomorrow if they get around to updating the Excel spreadsheets.

The EIA says Bakken new wells will produce 100,000 bpd in October but all the old wells will decline by 73,000 bpd and leave a net increase of 27,000 bpd. If these numbers are correct and September production was 1,152,000 bpd then that means the monthly decline rate is 6.33%.

The EIA says Eagle Ford new wells will produce 154,000 bpd in October but all the old wells will decline by 123,000 bpd and leave a net increase of 31,000 bpd. If these numbers are correct and September production was 1,551,000 bpd then that means the monthly decline rate is 7.93%.
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Enno Peters’ post + EIA DPR Report

08/12/201408/13/2014 Ron Patterson 105 Comments

The first half of this post is a guest post by Enno Peters. The second half is taken from the latest EIA Drilling Productivity Report.

GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF WELL QUALITY IN NORTH DAKOTA

by Enno Peters

SUMMARY

I was interested in doing a geographical analysis of the oil production in North Dakota. Detailed information made freely available by the NDIC allowed me to analyze how, geographically, wellperformance has been changing over time, in the area of North Dakota where most oil is produced.

RESULTS

In the following animated gif, you will see part of North Dakota. It contains the North West corner that borders Montana and Canada. The scale is in miles, with a rather arbitrary origin. Projected on this map is a contour map. The numbers of these contours are the cumulative 1 year returns for wells drilled within that area, and the unit is 1000 barrels of oil (no gas). For example, contours with the value 50 mark the area in which wells produced at least 50 k barrels of oil in their first year.

I could calculate the surface areas of several levels of first year well returns, in order to determine the trend of these areas. In the following chart you can see for each year the (estimated) surface volumes for 3 levels of first year well returns, 50k, 80k, and 110 k barrels of oil.

The sudden increase in 2013 of estimated productive surface area, in which wells could produce at least 50 k barrels of oil in their first year, may be explained by

1) the fact that I could only use data until June 2013 (as the 2014 May data is currently the latest one available), and therefore the number of data points are 1/3 of what I have for 2012. The method to determine the contours may not be suitable with this number of data points.

2) changing well practices

3) entering of new formations

So far I suspect that it is mostly 1), but that 2) and 3) could also be part of the answer, and therefore recommend to mostly ignore the 2013 results for now.

As a guide to interpret these results, I estimate (based on a discounted cash flow analysis) that a well that returns 50 k barrels of oil needs a minimum WTI price of about $120; about $82 WTI is needed for 80 k wells or better, and a well that returns 110 k barrels of oil in its first year is about even with $64 WTI. These are rough indications; I have seen a good analysis that estimates 10% higher required WTI prices for these levels of well performance. With current prices that would mean that 50 k wells are not profitable, while 80+ k wells clearly are.

I further estimate that the estimated total oil return (EUR) of a well is just over 4 times its first year return.
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EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report

07/14/201407/14/2014 Ron Patterson 63 Comments

Note: Just as I was finishing this post North Dakota published their production numbers for May 2014. North Dakota production was up over 36,000 barrels per day on 227 new well completions according to The Director’s Cut. I will have a post on all that tomorrow.

The EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report has just came out. Below are a few charts gleaned from that report. The World’s seven largest publicly owned oil companies have peaked. Their combined production has declined 12.4% since 2009.

The Drilling Productivity Report shows, or tries to show, the true decline rate of shale oil and gas. I usually only track the oil however.

In January the EIA estimated that Bakken production from new wells would equal 88 kb/d. They estimated that the declines of all older wells would equal 63 kb/d leaving net production at 25 kb/d.

In August they estimate that Bakken production from new wells will equal 90 kb/d or 2 kb/d above January new well production. They estimate that the decline from older wells will equal 73 kb/d, an increase of 10 kb/d from January, leaving a net increase in production of 17 kb/d.

Eagle Ford fared a bit different. In January they thought new well production would increase by 120 kb/d while older wells would decline by 91 kb/d leaving net production 29 kb/d. In August they expect production from new wells will equal 140 kb/d, a whopping 20 kb/d over January numbers. However decline from older wells will have increased to 115 kb/d, 24 kb/d more than it was in January, leaving net production up 25 kb/d. So in spite of the 20 kb/d increase over January new well production, net production will still be 2 kb/d lower than January.
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