Updates
June 18, 2014: Boomberg is reporting that production will go up this summer --
North Dakota, which yesterday became just the fourth state to record oil production above 1 million barrels a day, could see even stronger growth over the summer as improved weather makes life easier for drilling crews.
Output increased to 1,001,149 barrels a day in April, the state’s Department of Mineral Resources reported yesterday. Texas, California and Alaska have crossed the million-barrel mark. Only Texas remains above the state, at almost 3 million barrels a day.
April oilfield work was hampered by heavy rain that shut roads and strong winds that closed down operations. Crews completed 200 wells during the month, and another 600 are already drilled and just waiting on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Better weather in the summer months should allow more new wells to start gushing oil.
“As the weather improves, operators should have full utilization of all their rigs, and possibly additional completion crews to whittle down the backlog,” Jonathan Garrett, an upstream analyst at Wood Mackenzie Ltd. in Houston, said in a phone interview today. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see quite a bit of production growth over the summer. It should be pretty impressive.”
Original Post
The June Director's Cut is out.
Oil:
April, 2014: 1,001,149 bopd
March, 2014: 977,178 bopd (revised) 977,051 bopd (original)
- that's almost a difference of 24,000 bbls / day (March to April)
- the increase represents almost a 2.45% increase
Producing wells:
April, 2014: 10,658 (new all-time high)Permitting:
March, 2014: 10,457
April, 2014: 233Pricing:
March, 2014: 250
All time high was 370 in 10/2012
Today, 2014: $91.71Rig count:
May, 2014: $88.31
April, 2014: $85.68
March, 2014: $86.72
February, 2014: $86.89
Today: 189Director's comments:
May, 2014: 189
April, 2014: 188
March, 2014: 193
The number of well completions was unchanged at 200. The Tioga gas plant conversion transitioned from approximately 25% capacity at the beginning of the month to full capacity by the end of April. The percentage of flared natural gas dropped to 30% as the Tioga plant came back on line; the historical high was 36% in September, 2011.Wells waiting to be completed: in the big scheme of things, I don't think there is any shortage of frack spreads right now. The big reason for wells waiting to be completed, I think, is due to pad drilling. Generally, operators wait until all wells on a pad are drilled to total depth before they frack all the wells. There are exceptions.
In the previous report: about 635 wells waiting to be completed, a decrease of 15 from previous month. At the end of the most recent month for full reporting, April, 2014, there were about 600 wells awaiting completion.
