Rigzone Story on Backlog in Completing Wells -- A Common Theme On This Site -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Link here.

According to Halliburton, the number of uncompleted wells in the United States was approaching 3,500 wells at the end of 1Q11.

As of the most recent count there were approximately 1,800 land rigs drilling in the lower 48 states for oil and gas. If you assume that each frac crew can complete six wells in the average time it takes to drill one well, then the equilibrium point for the number of frac crews in the lower-48 would be the number of horizontal and directional rigs drilling in US divided by 6.

Recent estimates peg the total horse power (hp) across North America available for stimulating wells at approximately 9 to 10 million. If you consider that between 25k to 40k hp is needed to stimulate each horizontal shale well, then that places the total number of frac crews covering North America somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 crews. Backing out a healthy figure for what are likely Canadian crews implies that there are at least 200 fracing crews available to complete wells in the US. Thus, as long as the unconventional count is over 1,200 rigs, then we would anticipate that the backlog for completions would continue to grow.

Currently there are approximately 1,300 rigs drilling unconventionally. This would suggest that the current back log will continue to grow by 100 uncompleted wells per month. At this pace the backlog could top 4,000 wells before the start of calendar 2012.

What is different about this build up compared to 2008 is that the composition of wells favors oil, condenstates, and NGLs. If you assume that the composition mirrors the rig mix, then over half the uncompleted wells will eventually produce oil.

During 2009 there were over 363,000 wells that produced nearly 1.7 billion barrels of crude in the lower 48 states. That equates to about about 12 barrels per day per well. However, you have to remember that over 2/3 of the existing oil wells are producing at marginal rates. So, using a higher average production of 200 bpd per uncompleted oil well would imply 400,000 barrels per day of production (~2,000 uncompleted oil wells x 200 bpd) untapped at the end of 2011. To put this in perspective, 400,000 bpd of oil would raise current U.S. production of 5.6 million bpd by 7 percent.
The implications of these trends points to a continude rise in prices for fracturing services and supplies. Current estimates place the amount of water used to fracture a well at 4,000,000 million gallons. Proppants (sand or ceramic) used hold the fissures open weigh approximately 5,000,000 lbs. per well. Usage of both is likely to continue rising considering that both the number of frac stages and the lateral lengths drilled are increasing. While there are several items going down the well during the hydraulic fracturing process, the largest component of the mix is definitely water.