How Good Are The "New" Bakken Wells? An Old Graphic Is Fairly Staggering -- November 26, 2018

Re-posting from November 21, 2018.

I wasn't sure if I would ever see this: a reversal in the downward trend of the average amount of oil being produced by North Dakota wells.

After a peak in the early days of the boom, the daily production per well in North Dakota began to fall, hitting an all-time (recent) low of 72 bbls/well/day. I was curious if/when it would level out and if it did level out, at what amount would it plateau?

Well, lookeee here --- after several years of steady decline, the average amount of oil being produced per each North Dakota well increased in the most recent reporting period.

While looking for something else, I ran across this graphic from 2017:

Visually, the graph below is much more impressive than the spreadsheet above.

Note that in the graph below, "91," the current average daily well production is almost off the chart.

A number of observations could be made regarding the graph. The most obvious one: shale operators can respond very quickly to changes in WTI pricing. Note how the operators cut back on initial production during the Saudi Surge.