natural gas hits $8, a 13½ year high, before retreating; SPR at a new 20 year low, total oil supplies at a 14 year low after record jump in oil exports; distillates supplies at a 14 year low, total oil + products exports at a record high; total oil + products inventories at an 8 year low; natural gas rigs at a 30 month high; DUC backlog at 4.6 months as DUCs fall to a record low
oil prices fell for the third time in four weeks after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its global economic growth forecast and as Covid-related lockdowns in China continued to impact demand... after rising 8.8% to $106.95 a barrel last week after Ukrainian peace talks failed and the EU considered a ban on Russian oil imports, the contract price for US light sweet crude for May delivery opened higher on Monday after protesters closed down the Sharara field in western Libya, adding to Russia related supply problems, but reversed those overnight gains to trade lower as traders reacted to a sharp decline in China's consumption tied to Covid-19 shutdowns of major cities, before rallying late to close $1.26 higher at $108.21 a barrel as the outages in Libya deepened concern over tight global supplies amid the Ukraine crisis....but oil prices moved lower in tandem with softening equities on Tuesday as traders refocused on a slowing economy in China and a downgraded global economic growth forecast from the World Bank, and then accelerated their decline after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its global economic growth forecast by nearly a full percentage point, and warned of higher inflation. to settle $5.65, or 5.22% lower at $102.56 a barrel....but oil prices advanced in pre-inventory trading early Wednesday after preliminary data from the American Petroleum Institute showed a surprise drop in U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, along with a larger-than-expected drawdown from distillate stocks, and then rose to over $104 a barrel after the EIA confirmed the API report, but backed off to close just 19 cents higher at $102.75 a barrel as the positive U.S inventory data was overshadowed by Covid-related deaths in China, which raised questions about near-term demand in the world’s No.2 oil importer. as trading in the May oil contract came to an end...with oil price quotes now referencing the contract price for US light sweet crude for June delivery, which had closed Wednesday 14 cents higher at 102.19 a barrel, oil prices moved higher on Thursday, as those who sold crude down in the prior two sessions covered their shorts amid a return of the supply issues that had fueled much of the year’s energy rally, as oil settled $1.60 higher at $103.79 a barrel, supported by concerns over a potential EU ban on Russian oil imports and the supplies already lost to the ongoing disruption in Libya, where violent protests had shut-in more than 500,000 barrels (bbl) in daily output, leading to a declaration of force majeure on exports....however, oil prices unwound those gains on Friday, falling 1.72 to $102.07 a barrel, after Bloomberg reported that China’s demand for gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel in April was expected to slide 20% from a year earlier, and thus finished with a weekly loss of nearly 5%, on the prospect of weaker global growth, higher interest rates and the COVID-19 lockdowns in China, while the June oil contract, which had closed last week priced at $106.38 a barrel, ended just over 4% lower, as a strengthening U.S. dollar index in the aftermath of comments from Federal Reserve officials indicating an aggressive pivot towards interest rate hikes further pressured U.S. crude benchmark...
Meanwhile, natural gas prices fell for the first time in six weeks, but not before hitting a new 13 year high, as an early Spring cold spell gave way to more seasonable temperatures...after rising 16.3% to $7.300 per mmBTU last week as the heating season ended with natural gas supplies at a 3 year low, the contract price of natural gas for May delivery opened 2% higher on Monday and rallied 10% to trade as high as $8.06 per mmBTU, the highest price since September 2008, before settling 52.0 cents higher at $7.820 per mmBTU, fueled by stronger weather-led demand gains, recovering LNG feed gas deliveries and storage adequacy concerns...however, natural gas prices completely reversed Monday's gain in falling over 11% on Tuesday, before rebounding to settled 8.24% lower at $7.176 per mmBTU, as traders took profits after weather models backed off the prior forecast of cooling in the eastern half of the nation at the end of April and early May...after the bouncing back to a $7.410 intraday high on Wednesday, the May gas contract price fell more than 3% to settle 23.9 cents lower at $6.937 per mmBTU, as forecasts indicated a turn to slightly warmer weather and heating degree day projections over the next two weeks moved closer to normal for this time of year....after falling another 3% early Thursday on the EIA report of a bigger-than-expected inventory increase, natural gas prices steadied to settle 2.0 cents higher at $6.957 per mmBTU...however, prices tumbled 42.3 cents to $6.534 per mmBTU on Friday, with the pullback from the 13-year high hit earlier in the week hastened by the larger-than-expected weekly storage build, and thus finished 10.5% lower on the week...
The EIA's natural gas storage report for the week ending April 15th showed that the amount of working natural gas held in underground storage in the US rose by 53 billion cubic feet to 1,450 billion cubic feet by the end of the week, which still left our gas supplies 428 billion cubic feet, or 22.8% below the 1,878 billion cubic feet that were in storage on April 15th of last year, and 392 billion cubic feet, or 16.8% below the five-year average of 1,742 billion cubic feet of natural gas that have been in storage as of the 15th of April over the most recent five years....the 53 billion cubic foot injection into US natural gas working storage for the cited week was considerably more than the average forecast for a 31 billion cubic foot injection from an S&P Global Platts survey of analysts, and it was also more than the average injection of 42 billion cubic feet of natural gas that have typically been added to our natural gas storage during the same week over the past 5 years, and more than the 42 billion cubic feet that were added to natural gas storage during the corresponding week of 2021...
The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA
US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending April 15th indicated that because of a record increase in our oil exports, we had to withdraw oil out of our stored commercial crude supplies for the 14th time in 21 weeks and for the 30th time in the past forty-six weeks…our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 159,000 barrels per day to an average of 5,837,000 barrels per day, after falling by an average of 305,000 barrels per day during the prior week, while our exports of crude oil rose by a record 2,090,000 barrels per day to 4,270,000 barrels per day during the week, after our exports had fallen by an average of 705,000 barrels per day during the prior week...applying our oil exports to offset oil supplies from imports to determine our effective trade in oil, we find there was a net import average of 1,567,000 barrels of oil per day during the week ending April 15th, 2,249,000 fewer barrels per day than the net of our imports minus our exports during the prior week…over the same period, production of crude oil from US wells was reportedly 100,000 barrels per day higher at 11,900,000 barrels per day, and hence our daily supply of oil from the net of our international trade in oil and from domestic well production appears to have totaled an average of 13,467,000 barrels per day during the cited reporting week…
Meanwhile, US oil refineries reported they were processing an average of 15,717,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending April 15th, an average of 194,000 more barrels per day than the amount of oil than our refineries processed during the prior week, while over the same period the EIA’s surveys indicated that a net of 1,817,000 barrels of oil per day were being pulled out of the supplies of oil stored in the US….so based on that reported & estimated data, this week’s crude oil figures from the EIA appear to indicate that our total working supply of oil from storage, from net imports and from oilfield production was 433,000 barrels per day less than what our oil refineries reported they used during the week…to account for that disparity between the apparent supply of oil and the apparent disposition of it, the EIA just inserted a (+433,000) barrel per day figure onto line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet in order to make the reported data for the daily supply of oil and for the consumption of it balance out, a fudge factor that they label in their footnotes as “unaccounted for crude oil”, thus suggesting there must have been an error or omission of that magnitude in this week’s oil supply & demand figures that we have just transcribed.....however, since most everyone treats these weekly EIA reports as gospel, and since these figures often drive oil pricing, and hence decisions to drill or complete oil wells, we’ll continue to report this data just as it's published, and just as it's watched & believed to be reasonably accurate by most everyone in the industry...(for more on how this weekly oil data is gathered, and the possible reasons for that “unaccounted for” oil, see this EIA explainer)….
This week's 1,817,000 barrel per day decrease in our overall crude oil inventories left our total oil supplies at 969,713,000 barrels at the end of the week, our lowest oil inventory level since January 11th, 2008, and thus a 14 year low….this week's oil inventory decrease came as 1,146,000 barrels per day were being pulled our commercially available stocks of crude oil, while 672,000 barrels per day of oil were being pulled out of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the same time....that draw on the SPR included a withdrawal under the initial 30,000,000 million barrel release from the SPR to address Russian supply related shortfalls, as well as an earlier ongoing withdrawal under the administration's plan to release 50 million barrels from the SPR to incentivize US gasoline consumption....including other withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve under similar recent programs, a total of 100,169,000 barrels have now been removed from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the past 21 months, and as a result the 555,980,000 barrels of oil still remaining in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now the lowest since February 1st, 2002, or at a 20 year low, as repeated tapping of our emergency supplies for non-emergencies or to pay for other programs has already drained those supplies considerably over the past dozen years...with Biden's recent "Plan to Respond to Putin’s Price Hike at the Pump", an additional and unprecedented 1,000,000 barrels per day will be released from the SPR daily starting in May and running up to the midterm elections in November, in the hope of keeping gasoline and diesel fuel prices from rising further up until that time....that total 180,000,000 barrel drawdown over six months will remove almost a third of what remains in the SPR at this time, as the following graph illustrates...
The above graph comes from a post by oil and gas researcher Rory Johnston at Substack, wherein he discusses the implications of the planned SPR release, and it shows the historical quantity of oil held in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, beginning from its inception following the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-74 to the present day...the graph is further annotated to indicate the reasons for major additions to and withdrawals from the SPR, most of which were due to disruptions to oil supplies following hurricanes in the Gulf (you can get a better view of that by clicking on the graph, or even better yet, the enlarged version at substack.com....on the far right, Rory has projected where the strategic petroleum Reserve will end up after the Biden withdrawals are complete, which will take the SPR back to its level of 1983, while it was still being filled...based on an estimated average daily US oil consumption of 18,000,000 barrels per day, the US will have roughly 18 1/2 days of oil supply left in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve this November, after all three of the Biden administration's SPR withdrawal programs have run their course ...
Further details from the weekly Petroleum Status Report (pdf) indicate that the 4 week average of our oil imports fell to an average of 6,098,000 barrels per day last week, which was still 3.1% more than the 5,916,000 barrel per day average that we were importing over the same four-week period last year….this week’s crude oil production was reported to be 100,000 barrels per day higher at 11,900,000 barrels per day because the EIA's rounded estimate of the output from wells in the lower 48 states was 100,000 barrels per day higher at 11,500,000 barrels per day, while Alaska’s oil production fell by 16,000 barrels per day to 428,000 barrels per day but had no impact on the final rounded national total....US crude oil production had reached a pre-pandemic high of 13,100,000 barrels per day during the week ending March 13th 2020, so this week’s reported oil production figure was still 9.1% below that of our pre-pandemic production peak, but was 41.2% above the interim low of 8,428,000 barrels per day that US oil production had fallen to during the last week of June of 2016...
US oil refineries were operating at 91.0% of their capacity while using those 15,717,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending April 15th, up from the 90.0% utilization rate of the prior week, and close to the historical utilization rate for mid April refinery operations…the 15,717,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week were 6.4% more barrels than the 14,765,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during week ending April 16th of 2021, when refineries were still recovering from winter storm Uri, and 26.1 more than the 12,456,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during the week ending April 17th, 2020, when US refineries were operating at what was then a much lower than normal 67.6% of capacity at the onset of the pandemic, but 5.2% less than the 16,583,000 barrels that were being refined during the week ending April 19th 2019, when refinery utilization was at a modest 90.1% for the same week of April...
With the increase in the amount of oil being refined this week, gasoline output from our refineries was also higher, increasing by 335,000 barrels per day to 9,836,000 barrels per day during the week ending April 15th, after our gasoline output had increased by 377,000 barrels per day over the prior week.… this week’s gasoline production was 4.8% more than the 9,386,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily over the same week of last year, and fractionally above the gasoline production of 9,781,000 barrels per day during the week ending April 19th, 2019, ie, the year before the pandemic impacted gasoline output....at the same time, our refineries’ production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) increased by 162,000 barrels per day to 4,816,000 barrels per day, after our distillates output had decreased by 388,000 barrels per day over the prior week…with that increase, our distillates output was 5.7% more than the 4,555,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending April 16th of 2021, but 4.9% less that the 5,064,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending April 19th, 2019...
Even with the increase in our gasoline production, our supplies of gasoline in storage at the end of the week fell for the tenth time in eleven weeks, decreasing by 761,000 barrels to 232,378,000 barrels during the week ending April 15th, after our gasoline inventories had decreased by 3,648,000 barrels over the prior week....our gasoline supplies decreased by less this week even though the amount of gasoline supplied to US users increased by 132,000 barrels per day to 8,868,000 barrels per day, because our imports of gasoline rose by 158,000 barrels per day to 597,000 barrels per day while our exports of gasoline rose by 32,000 barrels per day to 918,000 barrels per day...and even with 10 inventory drawdowns over the past 11 weeks, our gasoline supplies were still only 1.1% lower than last April 16th's gasoline inventories of 234,982,000 barrels, and 3% below the five year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year…
Likewise, even with this week's increase in our distillates production, our supplies of distillate fuels decreased for the eleventh time in fourteen weeks and for the 23rd time in thirty-three weeks, falling by 2,642,000 barrels to a fourteen year low of 108,735,000 barrels during the week ending April 15th, after our distillates supplies had decreased by 2,902,000 barrels during the prior week…our distillates supplies fell again this week because the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, an indicator of our domestic demand, rose by 338,000 barrels per day to 3,822,000 barrels per day, even as our exports of distillates fell by 261,000 barrels per day to 1,478,000 barrels per day, and while our imports of distillates fell by 50,000 barrels per day to 104,000 barrels per day.....after thirty-six inventory decreases over the past fifty-two weeks, our distillate supplies at the end of the week were 23.6% below the 143,464,000 barrels of distillates that we had in storage on April 9th of 2021, and about 20% below the five year average of distillates inventories for this time of the year…
The depressed level of our distillate supplies has led to diesel fuel and heat oil prices that are often $1 per gallon more than the already elevated price of gasoline...supplies of diesel and pricing of it are also elevated in Europe and globally, leading to economic restrictions and power outages in countries that cant afford it, such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan...although those diesel shortages had developed over time, the loss of Russian oil has exacerbated the situation, because refineries get more diesel per barrel oil out of a heavy crude than they do from a light one, and most Russian oil exports are medium heavy sour crudes....that global shortage of diesel also explains the thinking behind the 1 million barrel per day SPR release better than the administration's political messaging around gasoline prices...for US Gulf Coast and European refineries that were built to use a medium heavy crude like Russian Urals, they need to find an equivalent grade of crude to replace it, or do some expensive blending of other grades to match it…remember that the administration’s first frantic moves after the Russian oil ban were to try to get Venezuelan oil and even Iranian oil back on the market to replace it?…the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 60% heavier grades of crude, so it appears that they’re pulling it out to replace embargoed Russian oil…most oil we get from shale is light and sweet, typically more expensive, but worthless when one is trying to replace Russian oil losses...and those losses also explain our rising exports to Europe..
The big jump in our oil exports, combined with elevated exports of distillates and most other petroleum products, also meant that our total exports of crude oil and all the products made from it were at a record high of 10,600,000 barrels during the week ending April 15th, an increase of 17.9% from our total exports of 8,987,000 the prior week, and 60.1% higher than our total exports during the first four weeks of this year, before European demand was impacted by Russian troop movements...thiose record exports are quite evident in the chart below...
Meanwhile, with this week's record jump in our oil exports, our commercial supplies of crude oil in storage fell for the 24th time in 38 weeks and for the 33rd time in the past year, decreasing by 8,020,000 barrels over the week, from 421,753,000 barrels on April 8th to 413,733,000 barrels on April 15th, after our commercial crude supplies had increased by 9,382,000 barrels over the prior week…with this week’s decrease, our commercial crude oil inventories slipped to about 15% below the most recent five-year average of crude oil supplies for this time of year, but were still 18.7% above the average of our crude oil stocks as of the third weekend of April over the 5 years at the beginning of the past decade, with the disparity between those comparisons arising because it wasn’t until early 2015 that our oil inventories first topped 400 million barrels....since our crude oil inventories had jumped to record highs during the Covid lockdowns of spring 2020, and then jumped again after last year's winter storm Uri froze off Gulf Coast refining, our commercial crude oil supplies as of this April 15th were 16.1% less than the 493,017,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on April 16th of 2021, and were also 20.2% less than the 518,640,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on April 17th of 2020, and 10.2% less than the 460,633,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on April 19th of 2019…
The big jump in our oil exports, combined with elevated exports of distillates and most other petroleum products, meant that our total exports of crude oil and all the products made from it were at a record high of 10,600,000 barrels during the week ending April 15th, an increase of 17.9% from our total exports of 8,987,000 the prior week, and 60.1% higher than our total exports during the first four weeks of this year, before demand was impacted by Russian troop movements...
Finally, with our inventories of crude oil and our supplies of all products made from oil remaining near multi year lows, we are also continuing to keep track of the total of all U.S. Stocks of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products, including those in the SPR....the EIA's data shows that the total of our oil and oil product inventories, including those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and those held by the oil industry, and thus including everything from gasoline and jet fuel to propane/propylene and residual fuel oil, fell by 12,795,000 barrels this week, from 1,711,881,000 barrels on April 8th to 1,699,086,000 barrels on April 15th, after our total supplies are down b by 89 347,000 barrels over the first fifteen weeks of this year...this week was also the first time our total inventories have been below 1.7 billion barrels since March 14th, 2014, and hence our total inventories of oil & its products are at an eight year low, as the graph below shows...
This Week's Rig Count
The number of drilling rigs running in the US rose for the 70th time over the prior 82 weeks during the period ending April 22nd, but it still remained 12.4% below the prepandemic rig count (note: this week's tally includes 8 days, because last week's report was out a day early due to Good Friday)......Baker Hughes reported that the total count of rotary rigs drilling in the US increased by two to 695 rigs this past week, which was also 257 more rigs than the pandemic hit 438 rigs that were in use as of the April 23rd report of 2021, but was still 1,234 fewer rigs than the shale era high of 1,929 drilling rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014, a week before OPEC began to flood the global market with oil in an attempt to put US shale out of business….
The number of rigs drilling for oil was up by 1 to 549 oil rigs during this week, after rigs targeting oil had increased by 2 during the prior week, and there are now 206 more oil rigs active now than were running a year ago, even as they still amount to just 34.1% of the shale era high of 1609 rigs that were drilling for oil on October 10th, 2014, and as they are still down 19.6% from the prepandemic oil rig count….at the same time, the number of drilling rigs targeting natural gas bearing formations was also up by 1 to 144 natural gas rigs, the most since October 11th, 2019, and up by 50 natural gas rigs from the 94 natural gas rigs that were drilling during the same week a year ago, even as they were still only 9.0% of the modern high of 1,606 rigs targeting natural gas that were deployed on September 7th, 2008…in addition to rigs targeting oil and gas, Baker Hughes continues to show two "miscellaneous" rigs active; one is a rig drilling vertically for a well or wells intended to store CO2 emissions in Mercer county North Dakota, and the other is also a vertical rig, drilling 5,000 to 10,000 feet into a formation in Humboldt county Nevada that Baker Hughes doesn't track...
The offshore rig count in the Gulf of Mexico was unchanged at twelve this week, with all of this week's Gulf rigs drilling for oil in Louisiana waters....that's one more than the number of offshore rigs that were active in the Gulf a year ago, when ten Gulf rigs were drilling for oil offshore from Louisiana and one was deployed for oil in Texas waters…and in addition to rigs drilling in the Gulf, this week also saw the startup of an offshore rig in the Cook Inlet of Alaska, where natural gas is being targeted at a depth greater than 15,000 feet...a year ago, there were no rigs offshore other than those in the Gulf....however, last year did have an inland water based rig active, while this week the last "inland waters" rig that was active has been shut down...
The count of active horizontal drilling rigs was up by 3 to 639 horizontal rigs this week, which was also 242 more rigs than the 398 horizontal rigs that were in use in the US on April 23rd of last year, but still 53.5% less than the record 1,374 horizontal rigs that were drilling on November 21st of 2014....on the other hand, the directional rig count was down by one to 31 directional rigs this week, but those were still up by 12 from the 19 directional rigs that were operating during the same week a year ago…meanwhile, the vertical rig count was unchanged at 25 vertical rigs this week, while those were still up by 3 from the 22 vertical rigs that were in use on April 23rd of 2021….
The details on this week’s changes in drilling activity by state and by major shale basin are shown in our screenshot below of that part of the rig count summary pdf from Baker Hughes that gives us those changes…the first table below shows weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major oil & gas producing states, and the table below that shows the weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major US geological oil and gas basins…in both tables, the first column shows the active rig count as of April 22nd, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs between last week’s count (April 14th) and this week’s (April 22nd) count, the third column shows last week’s April 14th active rig count, the 4th column shows the change between the number of rigs running on Friday and the number running on the Friday before the same weekend of a year ago, and the 5th column shows the number of rigs that were drilling at the end of that reporting week a year ago, which in this week’s case was the 23rd of April, 2021...
As you can see, there weren't many changes this week; there were two oil rigs added in North Dakota's Williston basin, another rig was added in Oklahoma's Cana Woodford, and yet another oil rig was added to Oklahoma's Ardomore Woodford at the same time....however, since the Oklahoma rig count was unchanged, and since the national oil rig count was only up by one, we can figure that two oil rigs had to have been shut down elsewhere in Oklahoma, in a basin or basins that Baker Hughes doesn't track... checking the Rigs by State file at Baker Hughes for the changes in the Eagle Ford region, we find that two rigs were added in Texas Oil District 1, but that a rig was pulled out of Texas Oil District 2; one of those rig additions accounts for the addition of a 10th natural gas rig in the Eagle Ford; the other addition was offset by the rig removal in District 2 and could have been targeting oil or gas (the North America Rotary Rig Count Pivot Table (XLS) provides county level details, should you want to know exactly what and where those changes were)...since the Alaska rig addition was also targeting natural gas in the Cook inlet, and since the national gas rig count was only up by one, that means there had to have been a natural gas rig removed elsewhere that had been drilling for natural gas... checking the aforementioned North America Rotary Rig Count Pivot Table, we find the rig that was removed from Wyoming was a horizontal rig that had been targetting naturual gas at a depth of more than 15,000 feet in the Green River Basin in Sublette County, which is a basin that Baker Hughes doesn't track...
DUC well report for March
Monday of this week saw the release of the EIA's Drilling Productivity Report for April, which included the EIA's March data on drilled but uncompleted (DUC) oil and gas wells in the 7 most productive shale regions (shown under the report's tab 3)....that data showed a decrease in uncompleted wells nationally for the 22nd consecutive month in March, as both completions of drilled wells and drilling of new wells increased in March, but remained well below average pre-pandemic levels...for the 7 sedimentary regions covered by this report, the total count of DUC wells decreased by 114 wells, falling from 4,387 DUC wells in February to 4,273 DUC wells in March, which was the lowest number of US wells left uncompleted on record, and also 38.1% fewer DUCs than the 6,905 wells that had been drilled but remained uncompleted as of the end of March of a year ago...this month's DUC decrease occurred as 823 wells were drilled in the 7 regions that this report covers (representing 87% of all U.S. onshore drilling operations) during March, up from the 779 wells that were drilled in February, while 937 wells were completed and brought into production by fracking them, up by 9 from the 928 well completions seen in February, and up by 387 from the 854 completions seen in March of last year....at the March completion rate, the 4,273 drilled but uncompleted wells remaining at the end of the month represents a 4.6 month backlog of wells that have been drilled but are not yet fracked, down from the 4.7 month DUC well backlog of a month ago, and the lowest backlog since December 2014, despite a completion rate that is still more than 20% below 2019's pre-pandemic average...
only the oil producing regions saw a net DUC well decrease during March, since the natural gas producing Haynesville shale saw an increase in DUCs that was greater than the Appalachian DUC decrease....the number of uncompleted wells remaining in the Permian basin of west Texas and New Mexico decreased by 71, from 1,380 DUC wells at the end of February to 1,309 DUCs at the end of March, as 362 new wells were drilled into the Permian basin during March, while 433 already drilled wells in the region were being fracked....in addition, DUC wells in the Niobrara chalk of the Rockies' front range decreased by 14, falling from 331 at the end of February to a record low of 317 DUC wells at the end of March, as 90 wells were drilled into the Niobrara chalk during March, while 104 Niobrara wells were completed....meanwhile, the number of uncompleted wells remaining in Oklahoma's Anadarko basin decreased by 13, falling from 753 at the end of February to 740 DUC wells at the end of March, as 55 wells were drilled into the Anadarko basin during March, while 68 Anadarko wells were completed....at the same time, there was a decrease of 11 DUC wells in the Bakken of North Dakota, where DUC wells fell from 426 at the end of February to a record low of 415 DUCs at the end of March, as 65 wells were drilled into the Bakken during March, while 76 of the drilled wells in the Bakken were being fracked.....in addition, DUCs in the Eagle Ford shale of south Texas also decreased by 11, from 653 DUC wells at the end of February to a record low of 642 DUCs at the end of March, as 90 wells were drilled in the Eagle Ford during March, while 101 already drilled Eagle Ford wells were being fracked....
among the natural gas producing regions, the drilled but uncompleted well count in the Appalachian region, which includes the Utica shale, fell by 6 wells, from 473 DUCs at the end of February to a record low of 467 DUCs at the end of March, as 89 wells were drilled into the Marcellus and Utica shales during the month, while 95 of the already drilled wells in the region were fracked....on the other hand, the uncompleted well inventory in the natural gas producing Haynesville shale of the northern Louisiana-Texas border region rose by 12, from 371 DUCs in Februrary to 383 DUCs by the end of March, as 72 wells were drilled into the Haynesville during February, while 60 of the already drilled Haynesville wells were fracked during the same period....thus, for the month of March, DUCs in the five major oil-producing basins tracked by this report (ie., the Anadarko, Bakken, Niobrara, Permian, and Eagle Ford) decreased by a total of 120 wells to 3,423 DUC wells, while the uncompleted well count in the major natural gas basins (the Marcellus, the Utica, and the Haynesville) increased by net of 6 wells to 850 wells, although as this report notes, once into production, more than half the wells drilled nationally will produce both oil and gas...
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