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Drilling Productivity Report

Release Date: May 13, 2024 full reportPDF
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Note: Beginning June 11, 2024, we will publish the shale gas tight oil production data and Drilling Productivity Report data in the Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) data tables. These improvements will provide a disaggregated STEO forecast for oil and natural gas production in different regions of the United States.


New-well oil production per rig
barrels/day
New-well gas production per rig
thousand cubic feet/day
Region May 2024 June 2024 change May 2024 June 2024 change
Anadarko 717 719 2 4,840 4,875 35
Appalachia 239 241 2 28,465 28,643 178
Bakken 1,745 1,747 2 2,660 2,663 3
Eagle Ford 1,635 1,639 4 6,059 6,065 6
Haynesville 14 14 - 13,453 13,487 34
Niobrara 1,496 1,498 2 4,622 4,678 56
Permian 1,386 1,400 14 2,536 2,547 11
Rig-weighted average 1,199 1,222 23 5,964 5,831 (133)
Oil production
thousand barrels/day
Gas production
million cubic feet/day
Region May 2024 June 2024 change May 2024 June 2024 change
Anadarko 382 383 1 6,528 6,518 (10)
Appalachia 136 135 (1) 35,967 35,791 (176)
Bakken 1,313 1,313 - 3,471 3,487 16
Eagle Ford 1,102 1,106 4 7,344 7,323 (21)
Haynesville 32 32 - 15,606 15,339 (267)
Niobrara 702 697 (5) 5,359 5,344 (15)
Permian 6,169 6,187 18 25,250 25,393 143
Total 9,836 9,853 17 99,525 99,195 (330)
Drilled but uncompleted wells (DUC)
wells
Region March 2024 April 2024 change
Anadarko 697 701 4
Appalachia 819 824 5
Bakken 322 328 6
Eagle Ford 347 345 (2)
Haynesville 784 791 7
Niobrara 644 628 (16)
Permian 891 893 2
Total 4,504 4,510 6

The Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) rig productivity metric new-well oil/natural gas production per rig can become unstable during periods of rapid decreases or increases in the number of active rigs and well completions. The metric uses a fixed ratio of estimated total production from new wells divided by the region's monthly rig count, lagged by two months. The metric does not represent new-well oil/natural gas production per newly completed well.

The DPR metric legacy oil/natural gas production change can become unstable during periods of rapid decreases or increases in the volume of well production curtailments or shut-ins. This effect has been observed during winter weather freeze-offs, extreme flooding events, and the 2020 global oil demand contraction. The DPR methodology involves applying smoothing techniques to most of the data series because of inherent noise in the data.

February 2024 Supplement: Initial 180-Day Production Trends in Major U.S. Shale Regions.

September 2021 Supplement: Gas-to-oil ratios in U.S. primary oil-producing regions.

January 2021 Supplement: Base production in North Dakota has fully recovered after a significant reduction.

September 2020 Supplement: With low rig counts, the inventory of drilled but uncompleted (DUC) wells provides short-term reserve for completions of new wells.

August 2020 Supplement: Rig counts fall but new-well production per rig rise as new-well production persists.

March 2020 Supplement: Base production accounts for a material share of total U.S. tight oil production.