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Saturday, March 16, 2013

Average Oil Production Per North Dakota Well Per Day

Updates

December 26, 2014: data for production may be updated periodically.

Original Post

When I first started blogging about the Bakken, I posted the average oil production per North Dakota well per day. With the news that North Dakota production has plateaued at around 740,000 bopd, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at that data again.

Oil was discovered in North Dakota in 1951, so few wells early on would skew results. Therefore, I started with 1961.

Here is the average oil production per ND well per day in bbls)

January, 1961: 44 bopd per North Dakota well; 1,469 producing wells
January, 1971: 40 bopd; 1,462 producing wells
January, 1981: 54 bopd; 2,290 producing wells
January, 1991: 30 bopd; 3,393 producing wells
January, 2000, the year the Bakken boom began in Montana: 29 bopd; 3,089 active wells
January, 2005: 29 bopd; 3,154 producing wells
January, 2006: 30 bopd; 3,264 producing wells
January, 2007, the year the Bakken boom began in North Dakota: 33 bopd; 3,449 active wells
January, 2008: 38 bopd; 3,662 producing wells
January, 2009: 48 bopd; 3,951 producing wells
January, 2010: 54 bopd: 4,394 producing wells
January, 2011: 68 bopd; 5,067 producing wells
January, 2012: 86 bopd; 6,347 producing wells
December, 2012: 96 bopd: 8,004 producing wells
January, 2013: 91 bopd; 8,075 producing wells
January, 2014: 96 bopd, 9,752 producing wells (slump in oil price began October, 2014)

33 bopd/well in 2007 when the boom started in North Dakota. 96 bopd/well recently. Almost tripled in six years. 

Production would include wells that are producing but not yet completed. It will be interesting to see if during the transition to multi-pad drilling we might not see a trend, albeit temporary, in the number of producing wells continuing to increase, and average daily production per well decreasing. Bakken wells produce some oil before they are completed/fracked.

The development of the Spearfish formation has lagged during the Bakken boom. But now, it seems that Legacy and Surge are getting their drilling programs in place and will significantly increase Spearfish drilling. These wells have much lower production than the Bakken. If the number of Spearfish wells is high enough to affect the data, the Spearfish wells should pull the daily average production down per well. Of course, overall production will go up.

The source for the data is the NDIC website. At this link, click on "Historical Monthly Oil Production Statistics."

4 comments:

  1. What counties does the Spearfish formation exist? Also Recently there has been some seismic testing in the Mission Canyon or Madison formation by Samson oil company north of Minot. Oil drilling could get very interesting soon if new fields are discovered. My land north of Glenburn had seismic testing done Nov. 2012

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That part of the Spearfish formation with recoverable oil is in the western counties that border Canada: when I see Bottineau County and Renville County, I think Spearfish.

      For quite some time now I've been hearing "rumors" of some oil activity that will occur (eventually) north of Minot, targeting formations other than the Bakken. Most likely the Madison.

      Delete
  2. Shouldn't you look just at the bakken and three forks wells for an average? My simple look shows the bakken and 3Forks has higher production.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The most recent data posted for yearly figures is 2011, so I haven't seen the 2012 data.

      In 2011, per the NDIC (just for the year 2011):
      3345 Bakken wells produced 126,178,063 bbls.
      126,178,063/3345 = 37,721 bbls/well
      37,721 bbls/365 days = 103 bbls/day/Bakken well

      As of 2011, per the NDIC (going back to 1951):
      46% of all North Dakota oil came from Madison wells.
      12% of all North Dakota oil came from Red River B/Red River wells.
      16% of all North Dakota oil came from Bakken wells.
      0.06% of all North Dakota oil came from Bakken/Three Forks wells.

      In 2011 (just for the one year):
      2,051 Madison wells produced 8,329,249 bbls of oil.
      8,329,249/2,051 = 4,051 bbls/well
      4,051/365 = 11 bbls/day/Madison well.

      In 2011 (just for the one year):
      455 RR/RR "B" wells produced 10,626,758 bbls of oil.
      10,626,758/455 = 23,355 bbls/well.
      23,355/365 = 64 bbls/day/RR&RR"B" well.


      So, in 2011 (just the one year):
      Overall average: about 95 bbls/day/well in North Dakota
      Bakken: 103 bbls/day/well
      RR&RR"B": 64 bbls/day/well
      Madison: 11 bbls/day/well

      There could be errors in the arithmetic.

      Delete

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