Tight gas production in Pennsylvania was flat at 19.3 Bcf/d in the first quarter.

But with natural gas prices at their lowest level in a quarter-century and only 18 horizontal rigs, we expect a fall in output in the coming quarters.

This interactive presentation contains the latest gas (and a little oil) production data, from all 9,565 horizontal wells in Pennsylvania that started producing from 2010 onward, through March.

Visit ShaleProfile blog to explore the full interactive dashboard

Total production

Natural gas production fell by 1% m-o-m to 19.3 Bcf/d in March, the same level as in January. In the first quarter of this year, 144 wells started production, very much inline with the same period in the previous 3 years.

Supply Projection dashboard

However, natural-gas prices have dropped to their lowest level in a quarter-century and with 18 horizontal rigs as of last week (according to the Baker Hughes rig count), drilling activity is at the lowest level since 2016. At this pace, assuming no changes in well & rig productivity, you can find in our Supply projection dashboard that production will likely decline in the coming quarters:

Natural gas outlook for Pennsylvania, with constant drilling activity and productivity

Well productivity

Well productivity has improved somewhat since 2017; new wells recover almost 5 Bcf of natural gas in the first 3 years, on average (see the “Well quality” tab).

Well productivity

EQT is, after its acquisition of Rice Energy, the largest natural gas producer in Pennsylvania, with 3.7 Bcf/d of operated natural gas production capacity (“Top operators”).

However, its well performance is still behind that of Cabot, the number 2 (which operates in the opposite corner of Pennsylvania), as you can see in the following chart from ShaleProfile Analytics (Professional):

Well performance comparison between EQT and Cabot. Horizontal wells since 2018 only.

This image reveals that Cabot’s wells recover on average just over 7.5 Bcf of natural gas in the first 2 years, compared with about 5.2 Bcf for EQT. However, this does not take into account that in recent quarters Cabot’s well productivity has slightly fallen.

Advanced Insights

The ‘Advanced Insights’ presentation is displayed below:

This “Ultimate Recovery” overview shows the relationship between gas production rates and cumulative gas production, averaged for all horizontal wells that began production in a particular year.

Finally

Two days ago we were referenced in a Bloomberg article: Oil’s Sudden Rebound Is Exposing the Achilles’ Heel of Shale

Early next week we will have a new post on all the 13 states that we cover.

Production data is subject to revisions.

Sources

For this presentation, I used data gathered from the following sources:

• Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
• FracFocus.org

Visit our blog to read the full post and use the interactive dashboards to gain more insight: https://bit.ly/3gyjjx0

As part of our COVID-19 response, we’re offering free access to ShaleProfile Analytics to people whose livelihoods are affected by the downturn: https://shaleprofile.com/shaleprofile-offer/