Permian tight oil production was flat at 4.4 million b/d in December, when WTI was still around $75.

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This interactive presentation contains the latest oil & gas production data from all 34,261 horizontal wells in the Permian (Texas & New Mexico) that started producing from 2008/2009 onward, through December.

Total Production

Permian tight oil production was flat at about 4.4 million b/d in December (after upcoming revisions, horizontal wells only). In 2021, some 4,200 horizontal wells were completed, about 20% more than in the year prior, although still well below the over 5,000 wells coming online in both 2018 & 2019.

Drilling Activity

The horizontal rig count in the Permian has risen to 303 as of last week (according to Baker Hughes), with exactly 30% of the rigs now active in New Mexico (91):

Weekly rig activity (left hand side) in the Permian Basin, by state, and WTI (right hand side). Well productivity

The following overview presents how well results have changed in the Permian

Well productivity and completion designs in the Permian Basin, over time. Horizontal oil wells since 2013 only.

The top chart plots the average cumulative oil recovered in the first year on production, by state. It reveals that in the New Mexico side of the basin, well results have steadily improved in the last decade, whereas in Texas the rate of improvement has slowed down since 2016, despite larger laterals and higher proppant loadings (see the bottom 2 charts). As usual in our charts, the thickness of the curves is an indication of the relative well count.

Top operators

In the final tab (“Top operators”) the production and well positions are displayed for the 15 largest producers in the Permian. Several operators were at or near their historical production peak in December.

Finally

Next week, we will have a new post on all covered US states.

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

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