Howard County is textbook quality.
In the last two months Howard County gas production has also gone into steep decline. The lag was 16 months behind oil production.
Midland County has also broken trend. Midland average production depth is about 10,500' while Howard County is perhaps 8,000.
The divergence between Midland County oil production and gas production confirms that the reservoir is below the bubble point and so oil production decline has begun.
Howard County has been declining at 40% per annum. If Midland County's decline is at 30% per annum, it will amount to 185,000 BOPD.
Martin County has also broken uptrend. As with Midland County, this was in May 2024.
As with Midland, the divergence between the oil and gas production profiles confirms that this is bubble point-driven.
Applying a 30% decline rate to Martin County results in a decline of 190,000 BOPD over the next year. These three counties, Howard, Midland and Martin, are good for a half million barrel per day decline in production rate by the end of 2025. Other counties include:
Karnes County
Reeves County
President Trump has undertaken to increase US oil production by three million barrels per day. That is a heroic undertaking given that he is facing a headwind of a half million barrel per day decline from three counties in Texas alone.
My advice to the President is to start talking about a plutonium breeder reactor rollout combined with synthetic fuel production by applying the Bergius process to the country’s coal reserves. Energy for the electrolysis to produce the necessary hydrogen for the Bergius plants would come from the nuclear reactors. Everyone would be happy in that there would be nuclear, hydrogen and coal all in the one solution.
The President’s pick for Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, is particularly promising in that he is invested in a plutonium breeder reactor startup called Oklo. This suggests that he has a complete understanding of what is needed.
I'm not sure if anyone has yet posted a link to Christine's excellent 3-part video on Youtube: Maximizing Oil Production: Christine Guerrero's 2025 Outlook
Gas to oil ratios county wide are effected by the number of well completions; the higher the number of new completions the lower the pecentage of gas is to oil. That must be the case in Midland County as historic county wide GOR has been much higher in the past than shown in the chart. You can easily see higher levels of completion activity in the GOR chart above.
The level of high grading affects GOR county wide. Longer laterals also effect the data as liquids IP60's are higher. Then, I believe from the data, wells decline much faster and reach the bubble point threashold sooner. So as long as Exxon is carpet bombing Midland County with 15K laterals, things will look better...until they run out of room for those longer laterals. Then GOR will go up again to historic levels, faster.
These are 2H23 Pioneer wells in Midland County. The County gets gassier to the East, much like the Delaware Basin gets gassier to the West. But these high GOR areas in Midland County circled are not in the gas leg, or the oil to gas transition leg, they are in the oil leg, have been overdrilled and are suffering from severe pressure depletion. One particular Block of land, containing multiple sections operated by Pioneer, in one of my studies, had reached 25:1 GOR.
The longer lateral fad is distorting the big picture. That will not last too much longer as there is no such thing as highgrading 15K laterals in sweet spots that are already saturated with 8K laterals on <600 foot spacing.
I like charts and I appreciate these. I simply like to know what the data means, how did the data get that way, and what does the data mean for the future.
Great charts! Thanks for sharing!
Thank, David - puts numbers to the assumption that gas and NGL production will still keep growing after black oil peaks, to a point. Also, Chris Wright specifically called out his support for the government labs that work on the nuclear program, and it seems the Trump admin realizes that the DOE's original job was to look after it. Battelle has run them as an outside "non profit" contractor for a long time. Betting their funding escapes Elon's wrecking ball.