Monthly production data from Bakken oil wells in North Dakota.
There are seven columns.
For this post, I am looking at the last column, the seventh column: daily oil per well (average):
Observations:
- this is for newbies
- when the number is above "100" in the seventh column, it gets my attention
- the Bakken boom began in 2007 in North Dakota
- prior to the boom, the amount of oil per well (on average) was decreasing
- The data starts with December, 2005, the last spreadsheet below:
- at that time, average production from each well in the Bakken averaged on a daily basis: 20 bbls/day/well
- in July, 2007, at the beginning of the boom, the average production per well on a daily basis: 60 bbls/day/well
- by March, 2010, about the time the boom would have been at its height: 140 bbls/day/well
- Now, going to the third spreadsheet below:
- in April, 2010, daily production on average per well per day: 140 bbls/day/well
- four years later, by October, 2014, daily production on average per well per day, about the same in the big scheme of things: : 130 bbls/day/well
- Then, going to the second spreadsheet below:
- in November, 2014, daily production on average per well per day: we start at 130 bbls/day/well;
- five years later, by May, 2019, daily production on average per well per day: down to 102 bbls/day/well;
- Finally, the most recent date, the small spreadsheet directly below:
- June, 2019, daily production, on average, per well per day: 104 bbls/well/day
- most recent data available, October, 2019: 108 bbls/well/day
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The Data
Observations And Comments
It makes most sense to start with the bottom-most graphic and move back up toward the top to the most recent data.
Most recently, the last five months, June, 2019 - October, 2019:
- we've plateaued at just over 100 bbls/well/day
- the trend, if anything, is moving higher, but ever so subtle
- dragging down this number are the tens of thousands of old wells that are producing so little they would be identified as stripper wells and many are
- so, if one wants to get that last column higher, all things being equal, plug and abandon some of those older wells
- interestingly enough, older, low-production Bakken wells are not being plugged and abandoned
- so, what's happening? We'll talk about that in another post
November, 2014 - May, 2019:
- this is/was a critical period
- a lot of things were happening that folks conveniently forget about
- Art Berman, et al, were forecasting the beginning of the end for the Bakken
- production metrics across the board were falling
- but technology was getting better; what was going on?
- the Saudi tried crushing the US shale sector
- the Saudi's "trillion-dollar mistake": the Saudi surge
- 2014 - 2016, which overhang into 2017
- even for me, it was a depressing and concerning couple of years
- but then in 2017, the numbers started to turn
- by the end of 2018, surprising naysayers, and even surprising me, average production/well/day again went over 100 bbls/day/well, and was trending higher
- one has to remember that by this time there were tens of thousands of old Bakken wells that were in serious decline and dragging the average down
- and, yet, the daily production/well/day on average was increasing, back over 100 bbls/day/well by the end of this period;
April, 2010 - November, 2014:
- in 2011, or thereabouts, average production/well/day maxed out at about 150 bbls
- by the end of 2014, average production/well/day plateaued to about 130 bbls
- we were in a steady state, and all things being equal, the average amount of production/well/day should begin declining ... and declining significantly based on the "dreaded Bakken decline"
December, 2005 - March, 2010
- the boom did not begin until mid-2007
- by 2005, average production per well day day in the Bakken was down to 20 bbls/day/well
- how "big" was the boom?
- five years later, average production/well/day had gone up nearly 7x to 130 - 140 bbls/day/well
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