Summertime Sadness: Drilled Wells, Completions: New Lows; DUCs: New Highs -- August 20, 2020

Re-posting.

A reader sent me a spreadsheet of the number of wells drilled, completed, and drilled/not completed (DUCs) on a monthly basis from December, 2013, through July, 2020, and including six oil and gas shale basins and one region in the continental US.

His analysis:

• July, 2020 saw a new low for completions and wells drilled.

It was not feasible to post the entire spreadsheet of all six basins and one region on the blog, but I have produced the data for the two basins that interest me the most: the Bakken and the Permian. Note: in the spreadsheet below, the gap between the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2017. As usual, there may be typographical and/or content errors. If I find them, I will correct them later:

	Permian	Permian	Permian	Bakken	Bakken	Bakken
	Drilled	Completed	DUCs	Drilled	Completed	DUCs
Dec 13			659			570
Jan 14	581	590	650	178	143	605
July 14	613	601	813	250	243	709
Dec 14	634	577	1042	226	207	728
Jan 17	352	259	1299	63	52	811
July 17	414	313	1711	96	103	765
Dec 17	474	382	2037	79	65	774
Jan 18	489	403	2123	107	72	809
Jul 18	568	512	2468	135	155	781
Dec 18	538	416	2951	109	70	793
Jan 19	585	469	3067	121	71	843
Jul 19	546	515	3500	117	124	869
Dec 19	449	453	3351	95	86	866
Jan 20	449	438	3362	100	86	880
July 20	138	98	3520	19	13	902

Comments:

• DUCs in the Permian have surged between 2013 and 2020;
• DUCs in the Bakken have remained fairly constant, in comparison, though roughly doubling since 2013;
• part of this is due to the fact that the NDIC doubled the length of time, from one year to two years, that a well could "go" without being completed;
• rates:
• January, 2017: annual rate, drilled wells: 756; number of DUCs: 811: think about that; ratio, rounded: 1
• July, 2020: annual rate, drilled wells: 240; number of DUCs; 902; ratio, rounded: 4
• anecdotally, it appears that operators shut in 80% of Bakken wells in May and June, 2020; July, 2020, data not yet available;
• natural gas production in the Bakken surges; the Bakken is not a natural gas play; occurred despite very, very little drilling and almost no completions;

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Summertime Sadness

Best social media line:  Lana del Rey should be a sexual orientation.

What a great visual of driving down the California coast. Hunter S. Thompson would have loved it.

Summertime Sadness, Lana Del Rey