natural gas price at a 14 year high; oil exports at a record high, oil supplies at a 18½ year low; DUCs at a record low

US natural gas prices are at a 14 year high but European gas prices are 8 times higher; US oil exports at a record high, US oil supplies at a 18½ year low with SPR at a 37 year low; total oil + oil products supplies at a 13½ year low; DUCs at a record low, DUC backlog at 4.4 months

oil prices fell for the 6th ​time out of the last eight​ weeks​​​ on fears of a global slowdown and the possibility of a nuclear accord with Iran...after rising 3.5% to $92.09 a barrel last week ​as weak US inflation data suggested that monetary policy might not need to be as restrictive going forward, the contract price for the benchmark US light sweet crude for September delivery moved lower in Asian morning trading on Monday on profit-taking amid a lack of fresh cues, and then dropped 5% to a new 6 month low after China reported factory output and retail sales slowed far more than analysts had expected, and that their youth unemployment hit a record high. before steadying to settle $2.68 lower at $89.41 a barrel, as tentative signs of a breakthrough in Iranian nuclear talks that could end sanctions on the country's crude-oil exports also weighed on prices....oil prices extended their losses on Tuesday after weak US and Chinese data spurred concerns about a potential global recession that ​would hit energy demand, and then tumbled to their lowest since before Russia's invasion of Ukraine as traders awaited clarity ​from talks to revive a deal that ​would allow more Iranian oil exports, before settling $2.88 lower at $86.53 a barrel as traders awaited the release of weekly US inventory data, with expectations that commercial crude stockpiles had continued building through the second week of August...oil prices moved higher Wednesday morning after the new head of OPEC said global oil markets faced a high risk of a supply squeeze this year as demand remained resilient while spare production capacity dwindled, and then jumped $1 as an unexpectedly large drop in U.S. oil and gasoline supplies reminded traders that demand remained firm, even if overshadowed by the prospect of a global recession, and settled $1.58 higher at $88.11 a barrel, as a rebound in gasoline demand to the highest level since before the July 4th holiday suggested that falling prices at the gas pump had incentivized Americans to take on late-summer road trips....oil prices extended higher in early morning trading Thursday following the bullish EIA inventory data, and rallied to settle $2.39 higher at $90.50 a barrel, as positive U.S. economic data and robust U.S. fuel consumption offset concerns that slowing economic growth in other countries could undercut demand...however, oil prices fell in early morning trading on Friday, amid persistent concerns over demand weakness across major economies of Asia and Europe, while ongoing negotiations aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran further weighed on the oil complex, but reversed higher in afternoon trading following reports that Russia's Gazprom planned to halt exports of natural gas into EU starting Aug. 31, and settled 27 cents higher at $90.77 a barrel as traders braced for more volatility amid concerns the Fed was far from done with interest rate increases...but despite the tight oil & fuel supplies, oil prices still ​still ​ended 1.4% lower on the week on a stronger U.S. dollar and fears that a global economic slowdown would weaken crude demand....

meanwhile, US natural gas prices finished at a 14 year high, as prices in Europe and Asia set new all time records...after rising 8.7% to $8.768 per mmBTU last week on weaker well output and on signs that Freeport LNG was on track to resume exports by early October, the contract price of natural gas for September delivery fell 4.0 cents or about half a percent to $8.728 per mmBTU on Monday on rising supplies and forecasts for cooler weather and lower air conditioning demand over the next two weeks than had been expected, but then surged higher in early Tuesday trading on technical momentum and hefty declines in the latest production estimates, and settled 60.1 cents higher at a 14 year high of $9.329 per mmBTU, as maintenance activities took another toll on gas field production...natural gas​ ​prices slid 8.5 cents to $9.244 per mmBTU on Wednesday, ​off about 1% from that 14-year high, as traders focused squarely on the next day's round of EIA inventory data, despite a drop in output, hotter-than-normal weather on the West Coast and in Texas, and near-record global prices...​gas​ prices ​then ​rebounded in early trading Thursday ahead of the inventory data, which was expected to show a lighter-than-average summer injection into Lower 48 stockpiles, but then ​inexplicitly ​crashed when the week's injection into natural gas storage was about half of what the market had expected, and settled 5.6 cents lower at $9.188 per mmBTU​,​ as well output stayed on track for a record high for the month...however, natural gas prices rose 14.8 cents, or almost 2% to another 14-year high at $9.336 per mmBTU on Friday, after global gas prices jumped to record highs on the Russian plan to halt exports of natural gas into Europe starting Aug. 31, and thus finished 6.5% higher on the week...

The EIA's natural gas storage report for the week ending August 12th indicated that the amount of working natural gas held in underground storage in the US rose by 18 billion cubic feet to 2,519 billion cubic feet by the end of the week, which left our gas supplies 296 billion cubic feet, or 10.5% below the 2,815 billion cubic feet that were in storage on August 12th of last year, and 367 billion cubic feet, or 12.7% below the five-year average of 2,886 billion cubic feet of natural gas that ​were in storage as of the 12th of August over the most recent five years....the 18 billion cubic foot injection into US natural gas working storage for the cited week was less than the lowest forecast and just over half of the average 34 billion cubic foot injection forecast from an S&P Global Platts' survey of analysts, and was much less than half of the 46 billion cubic feet that were added to natural gas storage during the corresponding week of 2021, and also much less than half of the average injection of 47 billion cubic feet of natural gas that had typically been added to our natural gas storage during the same week over the past 5 years....

The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA

US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending August 12th indicated that after a record jump in our oil exports, we had to pull oil out of our stored commercial crude supplies for the 5th time in 9 weeks, and for the 22nd time in the past 38 weeks, despite another big withdrawal of crude from the SPR, and despite a big jump in oil supplies that could not be accounted for....Our imports of crude oil fell by an average of 39,000 barrels per day to average 6,132,000 barrels per day, after falling by 1,171,000 barrels per day during the prior week, while our exports of crude oil jumped by ​a record ​2,890,000 barrels per day to average ​a record ​5,000,000 barrels per day, which meant that our trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 1.132,000 barrels of oil per day during the week ending August 12th, 2,929,000 fewer barrels per day than the net of our imports minus our exports during the prior week. Over the same period, production of crude from US wells was reportedly 100,000 barrels per day lower at 12,100,000 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 13,232,000 barrels per day during the August 12th reporting week…

With our oil exports at a record high, we'll include a historical graph of them below, where you can see that prior to the end of 2014, US oil exports, except for those allowed under NAFTA, had been negligible because they had been banned 40 years earlier, in the wake of the Arab oil embargo. The ban on US oil exports was lifted in a spending bill that Congress passed during the last week of 2015, part of a compromise that Obama agreed to in order to avoid a government shutdown...​as you can see, ​this week’s spike clearly beat previous ​oil export ​highs by a large margin..

Meanwhile, US oil refineries reported they were processing an average of 16,423,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending August 12th, an average of 158,000 fewer 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 average of 1,494,000 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, the crude oil figures from the EIA for the week ending August 12th appear to indicate that our total working supply of oil from net imports, from oilfield production, and from storage was 1,697,000 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 (+1,697,000) 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 omission or error of that magnitude in this week’s oil supply & demand figures that we have just transcribed....moreover, since last week’s EIA fudge factor was at (+343,000) barrels per day, that means there was a 1,354,000 barrel per day difference between this week's balance sheet error and the EIA's crude oil balance sheet error from a week ago, and hence the week over week supply and demand changes indicated by this week's report are worthless...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 1,494,000 barrel per day decrease in our overall crude oil inventories left our oil supplies at 886,110,000 barrels at the end of the week, which is our lowest total oil inventory level since September 19th, 2003, and therefore at a new 18 1/2 year low (see graph below)….our oil inventories decreased this week as 1,008,000 barrels per day were being pulled out of our commercially available stocks of crude oil and 486,000 barrels per day of oil were being pulled out of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The draw on the SPR was part of the emergency withdrawal under Biden's "Plan to Respond to Putin’s Price Hike at the Pump" (sic), that was expected to supply 1,000,000 barrels of oil per day to commercial interests over a six month period up to the midterm elections in November, in the hope of keeping gasoline and diesel fuel prices from rising further, at least up until that time. The administration's previous 30,000,000 million barrel release from the SPR to address Russian supply related shortfalls wrapped up in June, and his earlier release of 50 million barrels from the SPR to incentivize US gasoline consumption was completed in May...Including those, and other withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve under recent release programs, a total of 194,993,000 barrels of oil have now been removed from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the past 25 months, and as a result the 461,156,000 barrels of oil still remaining in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now the lowest since March 22nd, 1985, or at a new 37 year low, as repeated tapping of our emergency supplies for non-emergencies or to pay for other programs had already drained those supplies considerably over the past dozen years, even before the Biden administration's SPR releases. Now the total 180,000,000 barrel drawdown expected during the current six month release program to November will remove almost a third of what remained in the SPR when the program started, and leave us with what would be less than a 20 day supply of oil at today's consumption rate...

Further details from the weekly Petroleum Status Report (pdf) indicate that the 4 week average of our oil imports fell to an average of 6,452,000 barrels per day last week, which was ​still​ 0.5% more than the 6,421,000 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 lower at 12,100,000 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 lower at 11,700,000 barrels per day, while Alaska’s oil production was 18,000 barrels per day lower at 415,000 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 7.6% below that of our pre-pandemic production peak, but was 24.7% above the pandemic low of 9,700,000 barrels per day that US oil production had fallen to during the third week of February of 2021...

US oil refineries were operating at 93.5% of their capacity while using those 16,423,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending August 12th, down from their 94.3% utilization rate during the prior week, but still a refinery utilization rate that's within the normal range for mid summer. The 16,423,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week were 2.6% more than the 16,006,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during week ending August 13th of 2021, but 7.2% less than the 17,702,000 barrels that were being refined during the prepandemic week ending August 16th, 2019, when our refinery utilization was at 95.9%, near the top of the normal range, even for mid summer...

With the decrease in the amount of oil being refined this week, gasoline output from our refineries was also lower, decreasing by 185,000 barrels per day to 9,965,000 barrels per day during the week ending August 12th, after our gasoline output had increased by 858,000 barrels per day during the prior week. This week’s gasoline production was 0.4% less than the 10,000,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily over the same week of last year, but 0.7% more than our gasoline production of 9,897,000 barrels per day during the week ending August 16th, 2019, ie, during the year before the pandemic impacted US gasoline output. Meanwhile, our refineries’ production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) increased by 56,000 barrels per day to 5,178,000 barrels per day, after our distillates output had increased by 189,000 barrels per day during the prior week. With those increases, our distillates output was 6.8% more than the 4,848,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending August 13th of 2021, but 3.0% less than the 5,340,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending August 16th 2019...

With the big decrease in our gasoline production, our supplies of gasoline in storage at the end of the week fell for the 4th time in nine weeks; and for the 22nd time out of the past twenty-eight weeks, decreasing by 4,462,000 barrels to 215,674,000 barrels during the week ending August 12th, after our gasoline inventories had decreased by 4,978,000 barrels during the prior week. Our gasoline supplies decreased again this week ​because the amount of gasoline supplied to US users increased by 225,000 barrels per day to 9,348,000 barrels per day, and even though our exports of gasoline fell by 224,000 barrels per day to 902,000 barrels per day​,​ while our imports of gasoline rose by 119,000 barrels per day to 714,000 barrels per day. After 22 inventory drawdowns over the past 28 weeks, our gasoline supplies were 5.5% lower than last August 13th's gasoline inventories of 228,165,000 barrels, and about 8% below the five year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year…

After the increase in our distillates production, our supplies of distillate fuels increased for the 7th time in 11 weeks but for just the 20th time in the past year, rising by 766,000 barrels to 111,490,000 barrels during the week ending August 12th, after our distillates supplies had increased by 2,166,000 barrels during the prior week. Our distillates supplies rose by less this week because the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, an indicator of our domestic demand, increased by 201,000 barrels per day to 3,925,000 barrels per day, and because our exports of distillates rose by 15,000 barrels per day to 1,308,000 barrels per day, while our imports of distillates fell by 40,000 barrels per day to 164,000 barrels per day.. After forty-seven inventory withdrawals over the past seventy weeks, our distillate supplies at the end of the week were 18.6% below the 137,814,000 barrels of distillates that we had in storage on August 13th of 2021, and about 23% below the five year average of distillates inventories for this time of the year...

Meanwhile, after this week's big decrease in our oil exports, our commercial supplies of crude oil in storage fell for the 8th time in 14 weeks and for the 30th time in the past year, decreasing by 7,056,000 barrels over the week, from 432,010,000 barrels on August 5th to 424,954,000 barrels on August 12th, after our commercial crude supplies had increased by 5,457,000 barrels over the prior week. After that decrease, our commercial crude oil inventories were about 6% below the most recent five-year average of crude oil supplies for this time of year, but still roughly 22% above the average of our crude oil stocks as of the second week of August 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 commercial crude oil inventories had jumped to record highs during the Covid lockdowns of the Spring of 2020, and then jumped again after last year's winter storm Uri froze off US Gulf Coast refining, our commercial crude supplies as of this August 12th were still 2.4% less than the 435,544,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on August 13th of 2021, and were 17.1% less than the 512,452,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on August 14th of 2020, and 2.9% less than the 437,778,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on August 9th of 2019…

Finally, with our inventories of crude oil and our supplies of all products made from oil near multi-year lows in recent months, we are 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 12,561,000 barrels this week, from 1,686,484,000 barrels on August 5th to 1,673,923,000 barrels on August 12th, after our total inventories had risen by 7,709,000 barrels during the prior week. That left our total liquids inventories down by 114,510,000 barrels over the first 31 weeks of this year, and at the lowest level since October 17th, 2008, and thus at a 13 1/2 year low...     

This Week's Rig Count

The number of drilling rigs running in the US fell for only the 10th time over the previous 99 weeks during the week ending August 19th, and decreased for 3 weeks in a row for the first time since the initial Covid ​surge; however, they're still 3.9% below the prepandemic rig count....Baker Hughes reported that the total count of rotary rigs drilling in the US decreased by 1 to 762 rigs this past week, which was still 259 more rigs than the 503 rigs that were in use as of the August 20th report of 2021, and was 1,167 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 unchanged at 601 oil rigs during the past week, after the number of rigs targeting oil had increased by 3 during the prior week, but there are still 196  more oil rigs active now than were running a year ago, even as they now amount to just 37.4% of the shale era high of 1609 rigs that were drilling for oil on October 10th, 2014, and as they are also down 12.0% from the prepandemic oil rig count….at the same time, the number of drilling rigs targeting natural gas bearing formations decreased by 1 to 159 natural gas rigs, which was still up by 62 natural gas rigs from the 97 natural gas rigs that were drilling during the same week a year ago, even as they were still only 9.9% of the modern high of 1,606 rigs targeting natural gas that were deployed on September 7th, 2008….other than those rigs targeting oil and natural gas, Baker Hughes also reports two "miscellaneous" rigs that ​continued drilling this week, including a directional rig drilling to between 5,000 and 10,000 feet on the big island of Hawaii, and a vertical rig drilling more than 15,000 feet into a formation in Humboldt county Nevada that Baker Hughes doesn't track....a year ago, there were was only one such "miscellaneous" rig running...

The offshore rig count in the Gulf of Mexico was unchanged at 16 rigs this week, with all of this week's Gulf rigs drilling for oil in Louisiana's offshore waters....that's two more than the number of offshore rigs that were active in the Gulf a year ago, when all 14 Gulf rigs were also drilling for oil offshore from Louisiana...in addition to rigs drilling in the Gulf, we still have two offshore directional rigs drilling for natural gas in the Cook Inlet of Alaska; one is indicated to be drilling to between 10,000 and 15,000 feet, while the other one is indicated to be drilling to between 5,000 and 10,000 feet...a year ago, there were was only one rig drilling offshore from Alaska...

In addition to rigs running offshore, 3 water based rigs continue to drill through inland bodies of water this week...those include a directional rig drilling for oil to between 10,000 and 15,000 feet, inland in Galveston Bay. Texas; a directional rig targeting oil at a depth greater than 15,000 feet drilling through a lake on Grand Isle, Louisiana, and a directional rig drilling for oil in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, also at a depth greater than 15,000 feet...

The count of active horizontal drilling rigs was up 1 to 694 horizontal rigs this week, which was 240 more rigs than the 454 horizontal rigs that were in use in the US on August 20th of last year, but barely over half of the record 1,374 horizontal rigs that were drilling on November 21st of 2014....on the other hand, the vertical rig count was down by 2 to 29 vertical rigs this week, but those were still up by 10 from the 19 vertical rigs that were operating during the same week a year ago…meanwhile, the directional rig count was unchanged at 39 directional rigs this week, while those were also up by 9 from the 30 directional rigs that were in use on August 20th 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 August 19th, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs between last week’s count (August 12th) and this week’s (August 19th) count, the third column shows last week’s August 12th 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 20th of August, 2021...

there were just a few pretty straightforward changes this week...checking the Rigs by State file at Baker Hughes for the changes in Texas Permian, we find that there were two rigs pulled out of Texas Oil District 8, which covers the core Permian Delaware, and that there was another oil rig pulled out of Texas Oil District 8A, which includes the northern counties of the Permian Midland...since the Texas Permian count is thus down by three while the national Permian rig count was just down by one, we can conclude that the two rigs added in New Mexico were set up to drill in the far west Permian Delaware​, offsetting 2 Texas Permian​ ​losses​...elsewhere in Texas, there was one rig pulled out of Texas Oil District 2 while there was a rig added in Texas Oil District 3 at the same time, which were most likely offsetting changes in the Eagle Ford shale, leaving the Texas rig count down by three...the only other activity evident from our tables is the removal of an oil rig from Oklahoma's Cana Woodford, and since the Oklahoma rig count remained unchanged, we know there had to be a rig added elsewhere in the state in a basin that Baker Hughes doesn't track...there was also a natural gas rig pulled out of a basin that Baker Hughes doesn't track somewhere, but we can't easily tell where because there was likewise an oil rig added in the same basin at the same time, leaving totals for whatever​ basin &​ state that was in unchanged...if you really need to know where those changes occured, Baker Hughes offers the North America Rotary Rig Count Pivot Table (xls) which shows the individual well drilling records by state and county since February 2011, including all those in basins that Baker Hughes doesn't track in their other summaries..

DUC well report for July

Monday of this week saw the release of the EIA's Drilling Productivity Report for August, which included the EIA's July 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 25th consecutive month, as both completions of drilled wells and drilling of new wells increased in July, 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 20 wells, falling from 4,297 DUC wells in June to 4,277 DUC wells in July, which was the lowest number of US wells left uncompleted on record, and also 28.4% fewer DUCs than 5,975 wells that had been drilled but remained uncompleted as of the end of July of a year ago...this month's DUC decrease occurred as 954 wells were drilled in the 7 regions that this report covers (representing 87% of all U.S. onshore drilling operations) during July, up from the 938 wells that were drilled in June, while 974 wells were completed and brought into production by fracking them, up by just 4 from the 970 well completions seen in June, but up by 245 from the 716 completions seen in July of last year....at the July completion rate, the 4,277 drilled but uncompleted wells remaining at the end of the month represents a 4.4 month backlog of wells that have been drilled but are not yet fracked, unchanged from the DUC well backlog of a month ago, which is the lowest DUC backlog since March 2015, despite a completion rate that is still al​most ​15% below 2019's pre-pandemic average...

only the oil producing regions saw a net DUC well decrease during July, since the DUC well decrease in natural gas producing Appalachian basins was less than the DUC well increase in Haynesville shale....the number of uncompleted wells remaining in the Permian basin of west Texas and New Mexico decreased by 21, from 1,218 DUC wells at the end of June to 1,197 DUCs at the end of July, as 417 new wells were drilled into the Permian basin during July, while 438 already drilled wells in the region were being fracked....in addition, the number of uncompleted wells remaining in Oklahoma's Anadarko basin decreased by 8, falling from 723 at the end of June to 717 DUC wells at the end of July, as 64 wells were drilled into the Anadarko basin during July, while 70 Anadarko wells were completed....meanwhile, there was a decrease of 1 DUC well in the Bakken of North Dakota, where DUC wells fell from 427 at the end of June to a record low  of 426 DUCs at the end of July, as 77 wells were drilled into the Bakken during June, while 78 of the drilled wells in the Bakken were being fracked....on the other hand, DUCs in the Eagle Ford shale of south Texas increased by 1, from 611 DUC wells at the end of June to 612 DUCs at the end of July, as 113 wells were drilled in the Eagle Ford during Ju​ly, while 113 already drilled Eagle Ford wells were fracked....at the same time, DUC wells in the Niobrara chalk of the Rockies' front range increased by 4, riising from 328 at the end of June to 332 DUC wells at the end of July, as 112 wells were drilled into the Niobrara chalk during July, while 108 Niobrara wells were completed....

among the natural gas producing regions, the drilled but uncompleted well count in the Appalachian region, which includes the Utica shale, fell by 8 wells, from 524 DUCs at the end of June to 516 DUCs at the end of July, as 96 wells were drilled into the Marcellus and Utica shales during the month, while 104 of the already drilled wells in the region were fracked....at the same time, the uncompleted well inventory in the natural gas producing Haynesville shale of the northern Louisiana-Texas border region rose by 11, from 466 DUCs in June to 477 DUCs by the end of July, as 75 wells were drilled into the Haynesville during July, while 64 of the already drilled Haynesville wells were fracked during the same period....thus, for the month of July, DUCs in the five major oil-producing basins tracked by this report (ie., the Anadarko, Bakken, Niobrara, Permian, and Eagle Ford) decreased by a net total of 23 wells to 3,284  DUC wells, while the uncompleted well count in the major natural gas basins (the Marcellus, the Utica, and the Haynesville) increased by net of 3 wells to 993 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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note: there's more here..