(Photo by James Ulvog. Four wells on a pad was big news only a short while ago. Now 4 is a small site.)
Only 10 oil fields have surpassed a production level of one million barrels a day. Currently three of them are running in the U.S.: Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Permian.
I’ve been wanting to find a source for Eagle Ford production. After reading a Carpe Diem post (which I can’t find again), I found a great source: the Energy Information Administration’s Drilling Productivity Report. Check out the second tab, Production by region, and the report data on the right side of the page.
Here is the production for the three top regions, in average daily production for each month from January 2007 through September 2014. Data for the last three months is estimated.
Two notes on the data.
First, for Bakken, the data runs through September even though the state regulators just released the June data. The EIA makes estimates for a few months out. Three in the case of Bakken. I’m not sure how many for Eagle Ford and Permian. In Bakken, the EIA is assuming a 2% monthly increase. Speculation from the state regulator is 5% a month through the summer.
Second, I couldn’t tie the actual data for Bakken back to the state’s reports. Then looked at the tab on the EIA spreadsheet listing the counties in each region. Realized there are five counties from Montana included in the data. That makes sense, since the Bakken region spills over into Montana a bit. So the data is for all US production from the Bakken field. Likewise with the Permian data. It includes four counties in New Mexico.
Here is the total production for the three fields from January 2007 through September 2014.
Look at that increase. Sorta’ looks like a flat line then the straight line turned up at about a 45 degree angle. Yeah, that’s an increase of approaching three and a half million barrels a day.
Very cool. Primarily because of the mind-boggling increase, but in small part that I know where to get the data.