US Light Tight Oil (LTO) Update
I have updated my scenarios for US LTO output, based on both EIA tight oil output data and average well profile data from Enno Peters’ shaleprofile.com. I have also created a scenario for the Niobrara shale oil play and for “other US LTO” which excludes the Permian Basin LTO, Eagle Ford, North Dakota Bakken/Three Forks, and the Niobrara.
Niobrara play
The recent Niobrara wells have an estimated ultimate recovery (EUR) of 143 kb. The oil price scenario below is used for all of the scenarios.
Well cost is assumed to be $4.5 million in 2017$. The scenario below assumes EUR starts to decrease in Jan 2019 as sweet spots become fully drilled. Economically recoverable resources (ERR) to 2040 are 2.7 Gb with 21,000 total oil wells completed, peak output is 623 kb/d in early 2021. Fewer wells are completed relative to the North Dakota Bakken and Permian basin because the wells are less profitable.
Other US lto
For US other LTO, much of the output is from condensate from gas wells so the analysis is more approximate and a discounted cash flow analysis is beyond the scope of this post, the “average well” produces only about 38 kb over its life, but in many cases the output of natural gas makes the well profitable, there are some areas where shaleprofile.com does not have data such as the Anadarko basin, so I have simply taken the average well profile for areas covered (excluding ND Bakken, Eagle Ford, Permian and Niobrara) and then found the number of these “average wells” that fit US other LTO output data from the EIA(including Anadarko). The true average well profile for all areas including Anadarko is unknown.
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